Lin Fu-nan, who paints in a contemporary style himself but who collects many of their works, points out that the old painters were all born around the same time, received similar educations and experienced similarly abrupt changes in their careers--a certain degree of popularity at first, years of hardship and neglect and now a miraculous revival. They indeed form a more or less cohesive unit of value.
本身畫現代畫，卻收藏許多台灣老畫家作品的「南畫廊」主持人林復南就指出，這些前輩畫家擁有相差無幾的出生年代、相同的教育背景、類似的崛起機緣，一起興盛、一起沒落，又一起奇蹟式地復出，他們的確象徵一個比較「單元」的價值體系。