Hsü Hsi came from Chung-lu in Kiangsi. He was a member of a noble family that had held office under the southern T'ang dynasty. He liked to paint from life and was an exceptionally able colourist. He delighted in capturing the exact likeness of flowers, bamboos, fruits, and animals, even of vegetables and insects. The T'u-hua chien-wen Chih of Kuo Jo-hsü associates him with the contemporary painter Huang Ch'üan saying, "most of Huang Ch'üan's paintings show rare animals and auspicious birds reared within the palace, strange rocks and odd flowers. However, Hsü Hsi finds his flowers in the wild, growing by steams, his bamboos on the plains, his birds by water and his fish in the-deep." Later critics designated these two painters as the respective originators of the "double hook" method and "hidden or sunken line method" of bird and flower painting.