1642 -1707 · Ming and Qing dynasties, landscape and ink thought

Inhabited mountains, travel souvenirs and sovereign ink make Shitao one of the freest and deepest voices in Chinese painting.

Shitao, born Zhu Ruoji in 1642 and died in 1707, descended from the Ming imperial house. The fall of the dynasty disrupted his childhood and led him to become a Buddhist monk. Traveler, painter, calligrapher and poet, he stayed in Anhui, Nanjing and Beijing before settling in Yangzhou towards the end of his life. He studied the old masters without accepting that tradition was reduced to a series of recipes. In his landscapes, the mountain, the river and the path are not copied: they are reconstructed by experience, memory and the movement of the brush. Reminiscences of Qinhuai belong to this painting of remembrance. The site of Qinhuai, associated with Nanjing and its river, belongs to this painting of remembrance. becomes a series of condensed sensations where emptiness, washes and calligraphic accents organize the march of the gaze. Shitao constantly varies scales, densities and rhythms. A line can suggest a rock, a branch, a bank or the very impulse of thought. His treatise About the painting of the monk Bitter Pumpkin formulates the idea of the "single brush stroke", a living principle which precedes categories and allows the artist to respond directly to the world. This union of painting, poetry and reflection makes Shitao a major model of individual creation in the history of Chinese art. The "Shitao" selection notably compares Reminiscences of Qinhuai. His reading favors details.

In Shitao, the landscape is not a setting to be reproduced: it is born again in the passage from memory to brush.