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...