This article surveys the life and work of Wu Shengyuan, a landscape painter from Chaoshan in eastern Guangdong, and situates him within the twentieth-century development of the Lingnan School of Painting. The author first recalls the school’s founders, Gao Jianfu, Gao Qifeng and Chen Shuren, whose call to blend Chinese and foreign, ancient and modern, was carried forward by Guan Shanyue and Li Xiongcai at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, where Wu studied, graduating in 1965. After years of teaching and a period in Hong Kong, Wu returned in 1989 to his native village of Luxi, which became the lifelong subject of his art. The essay is organised in three parts. “Poetic pastorale” discusses the rural scenes, labourers and small figures through which he turns everyday village life into poetry. “The landscape in the heart” examines his training in copying the old masters, his extensive sketching from nature, and works such as Spring Brook After the Rain (1964). “Ingeniously inspired” addresses his principle of learning from nature while finding the source in the heart, and his long exploration of ink textures and the interplay of ink and colour.