Description
One of the geniuses of Chinese painting, Shitao was born a prince in the Ming imperial family. In the turmoil following the dynasty's fall in 1644, he became an itinerant monk. After 1696, he settled in the city of Yangzhou, where he spent his late years as a professional painter. Shitao's paintings of this period are characterized by fluid brushwork and by moist, graded ink-tones.
As Shitao never visited the Luo-Fu Mountains in Guangdong province, his illustrations are largely imaginative. Long hoping to tour these mountains, he was inspired to paint them in twelve album leaves. Each scene was accompanied by textual description drawn from travelogues, and each depiction relies heavily on natural observation. Additionally, certain compositional elements, methods of contouring and foliage dotting all suggest the artist also drew from his knowledge of woodblock illustrations. The only genuine paintings remaining from the original set are the museum's four album leaves: "Mica Peak," "Three Peaks of the Upper Realm," "Solitary Azure Peak," and "Penglai Peak."
Published References & Reproductions
The Painting of Tao-chi, exhibition catalogue (The Museum of Art, University of Michigan, 1967), cat. no. 37.
Record of The Art Museum, Princeton University 28, no. 1 (1968), p. 35 (noted as recent acquisition).
Archives of Asian Art 22 (1968–69), p. 134.
Marilyn Fu, and Shen Fu, Studies in Connoisseurship (Princeton: Trustees of Princeton University, 1973), cat. no. 30.
Chūgoku bijutsu (Chinese Art in Western Collections) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1973), vol 2, no. 62 (leaf b illustrated in color).
Shitao, introd. by Fu Shen, Bunjingga Suihen series (Tokyo: Chuokoron-sha, 1976), figs. 126–27 (leaves c &d), p. 84; figures 128–2 (leaves a&b), p. 83.
Kiyohiko Munakata, Sacred Mountains in Chinese Art (Urbana: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Illinois Press, 1990), cat. no. 59, ill. p. 125 (leaf B) in color, p. 126–27 in b&w.
François Cheng, Empty and Full: The Language of Chinese Painting (Boston: Shambala, 1994), cover figure (leaf b).
Robert D. Mowry, _Worlds within Worlds: The Richard Rosenblum Collection of Chinese Scholar's Rocks _(Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museum, 1997), p. 71, fig. 6.
