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Depictions in art

According to an anecdote from the Jin shu, Wang once received ten live geese in exchange for transcribing two chapters from the Tao Te Ching, a foundational Taoist text. After his lifetime, art theorists such as Guo Xi continued to associate him with geese, creating the narrative that his calligraphic brush technique was inspired by the way that the geese moved their necks. Wang's fondness for geese "has come to be the emblem of his artistic personality in popular and elite imagination alike", and his depictions in art typically show him in the presence of geese. A 14th-century rubbing of a painting from the Song dynasty is the earliest known depiction of Wang with geese. A well-known painting, Wang Xizhi Watching Geese by Qian Xuan, was painted c. 1295 and is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Though the Orchid Pavilion Gathering in 353 did not involve geese, artists have often combined the two themes in their paintings of Wang. According to the art historian Kazuko Kameda-Madar, the gathering itself is "one of the most important painting themes in the cultural history of East Asia". Over time, Chinese and Japanese artists have added other recurring elements to their depictions of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering not mentioned in the Lantingji xu, such as saucers in the shape of lotus leaves to carry the goblets of rice wine down the stream and the presence of a young boy stealing a sip of wine.