Maya Angelou
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Shitao, Small Self-Portrait Planting a Tree, 1674. National Palace Museum, Taipei, public domain · Shitao, 'Small Self-Portrait Planting a Tree' (also called Master Shi Planting Pines), light-colour handscroll on paper, dated 1674 on his own inscription, National Palace Museum, Taipei (object number Zeng-hua 000114N000000000; donated by the wife of Luo Jialun). The museum catalogues the seated figure as a self-portrait of the artist when he was about thirty-three. The file is a reproduction of the figure detail (1513 x 1667) downscaled to 1089 x 1200 with no upscaling; it comes from a printed reproduction and shows print grain. The museum record offers its own images under open licences (CC0 at 1 megapixel, CC BY 4.0 at 6 megapixels); the painting itself is long out of copyright. · Public domain (a 1674 painting by an artist who died in 1707; the holder's own digital images are offered under CC0 and CC BY 4.0)
painter · Early Modern
Shitao
1642–1707
Known For
artisticcultural
Not yet included in personality matching — the documented evidence doesn't yet cover enough of the personality model. Everything else on this page is fully available.
Key Achievements
Painter-monk of the early Qing, born Zhu Ruoji, known for landscapes, fruit and flower subjects and orchids and bamboo in free brushwork and moist ink that the National Palace Museum links to his call to create a unique style.
Wrote the painting treatise Kugua heshang huayulu (Remarks on Painting), whose opening chapter grounds painting method in a single stroke; the Draft History of Qing notes that he wrote a one-roll treatise on painting.
After 1696 settled in Yangzhou as a professional painter; a 1795 local record credits his hand with the Wanshi Garden rockery, and the Draft History of Qing ranks him with Kuncan as 'the two Shi'.
Moments That Reveal Them
Li Dou's 1795 record of Yangzhou says that besides landscape and flower painting he was skilled at piling rockery, and that the Yu family's Wanshi Garden came from his hand and was still praised.
This is consistent with applying a painter's eye to a neighbouring craft. Cross-Domain Range
In his treatise he wrote that a painter who copies a master's manner is only eating that master's leftovers, and that 'I am I, and have my own'.
This is consistent with a stated insistence on a personal style, which is his own claim rather than an independent observation. Creative Originality
Turning Points
Having lived as an itinerant monk in several regions, he gave up monastic life and, according to the National Palace Museum, made a living as a professional painter, settling in Yangzhou after 1696.
This is consistent with moving from one way of life to another in order to work as an artist. Adaptability
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Sources
- Shitao (Q469439), verified live via the Wikidata API (2026-11-05): English label 'Shitao', description 'Chinese painter and poet (1642-1707)', Korean label 석도, birth given as 1642 (with 1630 and 1641 alternatives), death 1707 (year precision). Orientation only; not used as support for any row.
- National Palace Museum, Taipei, online catalogue record 'Small Self-Portrait Planting a Tree' (Qing Shitao zixie zhongsong tu xiaozhao, handscroll, 1674, object number Zeng-hua 000114N000000000), read in full in Chinese and English: catalogue essay by Liu Fang-ru and the colophons by Dai Benxiao, Tang Yansheng, Zulin, Wang Shimao and others, the 1915 note by Song Bolu and the 1962 note by Luo Jialun. CANONICAL SIGNIFICANCE SOURCE: Shitao (Zhu Ruoji), a descendant of the Ming imperial house who became a monk after 1644 and lived at Xuancheng, Nanjing and Yangzhou, later gave up monastic life and made a living as a professional painter; excelled at landscapes, fruit-and-vegetable subjects and orchids and bamboo, figure painting being rarer; free, uninhibited brush and moist ink; noted for advocating that one find and create a unique style (the museum's phrase for his maxim 'I use my own method'). The record dates the self-portrait to 1674 on his own inscription, when he was in the Xuancheng area, and calls the figure Shitao himself. Museum cataloguing is admiring; the colophons are by friends and later owners.
- Princeton University Art Museum, Asian art web feature on Shitao's Luo-Fu Mountains album leaves ('Asian Art Website: Luo-Fu Mountains'), read in full. A modern museum text: Shitao was born a prince in the Ming imperial family, became an itinerant monk in the turmoil after 1644, and after 1696 settled in Yangzhou where he spent his late years as a professional painter; his later paintings are characterised by fluid brushwork and moist, graded ink-tones; the Luo-Fu Mountains leaves are largely imaginative because he never visited the mountains, built on travelogue texts and natural observation, with influence from woodblock illustration. The page does not mention his treatise. Short; its dates for Yangzhou (1696) differ from other sources that give about 1695.
- Draft History of Qing (Qingshigao, compiled 1914-1927), juan 504, section on painters (Chinese Wikisource transcription), the entry for the monk Daoji (Shitao) read in full with the neighbouring entries on Kuncan, Zhu Da and Hongren. A later official compilation: Daoji, style name Shitao, of the Ming Chu princely line, became a monk after the change of dynasty; his brush was free and unrestrained, shedding old conventions yet in truth accord with the ancients; in later life he travelled the Jiang-Huai region and people vied to honour him; he wrote a one-roll treatise on painting whose arguments are called profound; he is ranked with Kuncan as 'the two Shi'. Brief and retrospective, written two centuries later; the notices of other monk-painters sit in the same passage. The political framing of the surviving Ming-descended monks in the passage is context only and is not scored.
- Li Dou, Yangzhou huafang lu (Record of the Painted Boats of Yangzhou, 1795), juan 2, entry for the monk Daoji, 'Shitao' (Chinese Wikisource transcription), read in full. A local record written roughly ninety years after his death by a Yangzhou resident: lists his names (Dadizi, Qingxiang Chenren, Xiazunzhe, Kugua Heshang), says he was skilled at landscape and flowers with free, spirited brushwork, and was also skilled at piling rockery, naming the Wanshi (Ten Thousand Stones) Garden of the Yu family in Yangzhou as coming from his hand and still praised, among the other rockery makers of the city. Independent of the Qing court history; the garden attribution is a single local tradition, not corroborated by another source read.
- Shitao, 'Kugua heshang huayulu' (Monk Bitter Melon's Remarks on Painting; Chinese Wikisource transcription of the eighteen-chapter text), the opening chapters read (the single stroke or 'one line', resolving the rules, transformation): argues that method arises from a single stroke, that rules should not bind the painter, that one should draw on the ancients in order to transform them, and that 'I am I, and have my own'. SELF-REPORT: the text states his own theory and is not evidence of how he actually worked; used only to support the row on abstract theory and as the source for what he claimed. Authorship is attributed in the Draft History of Qing and the museum record; the text's date and exact form are not examined here.