This is the first part of a study of the Huayulu (Remarks on Painting), the treatise on painting by the early Qing painter Shitao (Daoji). The author first situates the work as one of the most philosophical texts in Chinese painting theory: unlike earlier treatises by Zong Bing, Jing Hao or Guo Xi, it treats even the technical aspects of painting from a metaphysical standpoint, grounding art in the origin of the universe through the concept of the one-stroke (yihua). Parallels are suggested with Henri Focillon’s The Life of Forms in Art and with Kandinsky’s writings on the spiritual in art. It then reviews the reception of the Huayulu in Western scholarship, assessing the translations and studies of Osvald Sirén, Lin Yutang, Earle J. Coleman, Pierre Ryckmans, Helmut Brinker and Marcello Ghilardi, and favouring Ryckmans’s annotated French version. A section on tone and literary flavour describes the text’s confident, terse and at times defiant style and the difficulty of translating it. Finally, the author examines the treatise’s philosophical nature, presenting painting as a form of life that emulates the process of creation, and Shitao’s ideal of meeting all variations through the invariable while respecting, but not being enslaved by, rules.