Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Cui Bai
Northern Song bird-and-flower painter from Haoliang, made an academy painter after the palace screen commission of the early Xining era
A desk holds an unrolled sheet bearing three bold black ink strokes, with a rack of many brushes above it, a stone ink slab and ink stick, a porcelain bowl, a red lacquer box, a dish of red seal paste and a paperweight; a small seated figure shows through a round window onto bamboo.
Also known as Zi Zixi
Cui Bai, courtesy name Zixi, came from Haoliang (modern Fengyang, Anhui) and painted flowers, bamboo and birds as well as Buddhist and Daoist figures. The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings records that early in the Xining era Emperor Shenzong had him paint a screen for the Chuigong Hall together with Ai Xuan, Ding Kuang and Ge Shouchang; his part was judged the best and he was appointed an academy painter. Free-spirited, he at first declined, and accepted only when told he need not serve except on direct imperial order. The same catalogue credits him and his younger brother Cui Que with changing the academy's manner of bird-and-flower painting. His hanging scroll Magpies and Hare is signed on a tree trunk with a date of 1061 and is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei; Sparrows in Winter is in the Palace Museum, Beijing.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active mid-to-late 11th century