Prior to this study and annotated translation by Diana Chou, an Anglophone’s introduction to the person and work of Tang Hou would likely have been Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih’s Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). In that anthology, portions of Tang’s writings were excerpted and arranged thematically under headings such as “On Artists’ Styles” or “On Mounting and Collecting.” One of the significant contributions of Chou’s book is a complete translation. Here, in straightforward prose, we receive Tang’s slightly smug but well-intentioned instructions on how to become a superior judge of painting. We may also now appreciate in English Tang’s quicksilver non sequiturs: he follows a discussion of the visible qualities of naturally aged brocade as a clue to determining a painting’s date with the simile, “Looking at a painting is like looking at a beauty. Her manner, fortitude, and character must exist beyond her body” (102). Besides rendering his treatise in toto, Chou corrects longstanding errors concerning Tang’s dates of activity and the dating of Huajian, and she argues that the true impact of his Huajian has not been recognized.

Chou’s book consists of three parts: a set of three introductory essays, a heavily annotated translation, and five appendices. In chapter 1, “Biographies of Tang Hou and His Father, Tang Binglong,” Chou locates her subjects primarily in the artistic milieu of Hangzhou in the early Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Here we learn that Tang Hou may have acquired his interest in art from his father, Tang Binglong (b. 1241). Furthermore, Tang Binglong’s felicitous appointment as associate superior prefect in Hangzhou between the late 1280s and early 1290s likely permitted his son’s entrée to an important circle of collectors and artists that included Zhou Mi (1232–1308) and Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322). On the basis of internal evidence and biography, Chou argues that much of Huajian was composed during Tang’s early residence in Hangzhou. In the opening years of the fourteenth century, Tang moved to Shaoxing to serve as rector of the Lanting Academy before taking an appointment at the Yuan capital, Dadu. He died before 1317 while serving in that office. Based on her research, Chou amends the years of Tang’s lifetime to ca. 1250s–1310s, as clearly noted after the book’s opening epigrams (the Library of Congress cataloguing entry on the copyright page still uses fl. 1322, however). Chou could have been more precise. Tang Binglong could have been a youthful father at nineteen, but that he was so at age nine or ten strains the imagination. While the precise year of Tang’s birth remains debatable, his death before 1317 argues strongly against dating Huajian to the 1320s or 1330s. It seems reasonable to regard Huajian as a product of the late 1280s and early 1290s, or the early Yuan dynasty.

In chapter 2, Chou tackles the confusing and more arcane subject of different editions of Huajian and the preface that sometimes accompanies it, before discussing Tang’s intended audience. Chou succinctly presents persuasive evidence for accepting the Huajian as a complete work comprising two parts, an essay and a catalogue, in that order, and for dismissing the preface’s content as fictitious and the source of the longstanding misdating of Huajian. By contrast, the discussion of the latter topic of more general interest is not so directly illuminating. Chou first claims that Huajian “seems to have been written for, and circulated among, this group of Hangzhou collectors during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries” (33–34). Later, she suggests that it may have served as educational material for Tang’s students at the Lanting Academy (46). Finally, she proposes that Huajian functioned as a “guidebook to Hangzhou area collections for both his pupils and other collectors,” the latter being a group new to art consumption (48). That there may have been three different audiences is not so problematic; obviously, Tang need not have had one group exclusively in mind. But there are distinct problems for accepting each particular audience. With regard to the first set of known and somewhat distinguished collectors, we must consider the effect of his writing, characterized at times by unmitigated bluntness. Tang’s comment about Muqi’s ink bamboo paintings, “which were poor without compare,” is aimed at no particular collector; but would not Mr. Wang take issue with the allegation that his collection of some three hundred paintings were all “forged”? (45) Such bald statements call into question whether Tang really intended Huajian to be read by the people about whom he writes. Regarding the second possible audience of academy pupils, we may admit the speculation that Tang used Huajian for instruction, but it seems unlikely that while writing he anticipated this future audience. Last, neophyte collectors may very well have profited from Tang’s advice, but his rhetoric seems aimed as much toward confirming as toward extending insider status. With evidence scarce, we should probably think of the novice collector lucky enough to obtain a manuscript of Huajian as an accidental beneficiary. These questions about audience may seem overly exacting, but they point to a larger interpretive problem: understanding Huajian in its cultural context and measuring its historical significance.

In the third and longest chapter, “Reevaluating the Contribution of the Huajian,” Chou aims more directly at this problem. She enumerates Tang’s contributions to painting discourse: first, giving new prominence to the painters Wang Wei (415–443) and Dong Yuan (d. 962) in the literati tradition of landscape painting; second, creating a lineage of painters of horses; third, a “revival” of Xie He’s (fl. ca. 500?) “Six Laws”; and fourth, recognizing the achievements of Emperor Huizong (r. 1101–25) and Wang Shen (ca. 1048–ca. 1103). For each of these areas, Chou offers sufficient exegesis of appropriate passages from Huajian, and one wishes that it were matched with more robust analysis of the text’s historical impact. To take just one example, Tang’s “subtle influence on later connoisseurs and art critics” is supported by a single reference (55–56) to the writing of Dong Qichang (1555–1636). Subsequent stylistic analyses of paintings by Zhao Mengfu and Qian Xuan (ca. 1235–before 1307), though important for apprehending the historical and cultural context, can at best be evidence of all men sharing a common interest in ideas such as “return to the past fugu.” Chou moves quickly from one noteworthy topic to the next without fully relating or integrating them. Tang’s writing does sometimes suggest a mind that accumulates anecdotes with personal comments tacked on, but perhaps there is some greater reason for him to espouse these heterogeneous ideas and causes.

In the “Introduction” and “Chapter Four: Conclusions,” Chou tries to impose some discipline on Tang’s wide-ranging comments on painting, and we look here for an elaboration of the theme announced in the book’s subtitle, “Cultivating Taste in Yuan China, 1279–1368.” However, the heterogeneous topics contained in the three chapters are not easily yoked under this rubric of “taste,” and we confront still more ideas about Tang’s reputation and the significance of Huajian. The important questions that Chou raises—what were the purpose and the impact of Tang’s Huajian?—are open to further exploration.

In this her first book, Chou has carried out significant research and laid the groundwork for further scholarship on Tang’s Huajian and related topics. A revised edition, if she undertakes one, would offer an opportunity to resolve some of the previously raised questions. It would also be a chance to correct errors in spelling, syntax, and references, which regrettably detract from the book’s substantial value and usefulness. Additionally, an index to artists and other names mentioned in not only Chou’s essays but also Tang’s Huajian would be especially beneficial if the translation is to achieve its full potential as a research tool. These quibbles notwithstanding, the material here is rich, and Chou’s book is a welcome contribution to the field of Chinese art studies.