A Bushel of Pearls: Painting for Sale in Eighteenth-Century Yangchow (Hardcover)
"Early Western scholarship on Chinese paintings was at one time (metaphorically) placed in a hermetically sealed box containing the artist and his or (rarely) her works. Connoisseurship was usually the primary concern. . . . However, there was a large context of the places, people, society, and function of the painitings, especially in later times, yet this context has been probed in increasing depth only int he last decade or so. Hsü offers her book as an excellent example of this and has aptly chosen to focus on the city of Yangchow and its painters in the 28th century. At that time, Yangchow was an exceedignly wealthy city of connerce to the point of vulgar excess. Painters served, even pandered to, a rich clientele. Hsü uses fourn painters as 'case studies,’ and gets a full chapter. They are apt choices as they represent the gamut of artistic responses to the social environment. The paintings, like Yangchow, are rich and varied potpourri, and they are well served here. General readers; undergraduates through faculty."Choice