Presented at the November 2020 conference of the Annual Kurultai of the Endangered Cultural Heritage (AKECH) and the Annual Lecture on Exile in Comparative Literature and the Arts (ALECLA), this article traces the role of reclusive culture (yinshi wenhua) in the formation of Chinese mountain and water painting. It first outlines the origins of eremitism in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, contrasting the Confucian hermit, who withdraws temporarily for self-cultivation, with the Daoist recluse, who seeks communion with nature through wuwei and carefree wandering (xiaoyao you); the fisherman and the woodcutter emerge as its emblematic figures. The author then shows how the revival of Daoist and Xuanxue thought in the Wei-Jin period, embodied by Zong Bing and the circle of Hui Yuan on Mount Lu, gave rise to shanshui painting as an independent genre. Later developments are followed through Wang Wei’s literati painting, the hermit painters Jing Hao and Fan Kuan, Guo Xi’s landscapes “fit to ramble in and to live in”, and the Four Masters of the Yuan dynasty, notably Huang Gongwang. The article concludes that these ideals remain relevant to contemporary concerns about materialism and the environment.