Among the questions that have piqued the interest of Chinese art historians most in recent years is how painters were paid. Negotiations with patrons and clients were almost never a matter of record; indeed, fiscal transactions were rarely discussed, even by the parties involved, but rather conducted on the basis of mutually understood codes of value, taste, and reciprocity. Compensation might well come in the form of gifts and favors rather than money, further obscuring the outlines of the transaction. Ginger Hsü’s A Bushel of Pearls: Painting for Sale in Eighteenth-Century Yangchow joins a number of recent studies that illuminate aspects of this very private market system and goes further than any in producing a detailed, complex, and convincing picture of painters’ livelihood in a specific historical setting. That setting is the southern city of Yangzhou in the eighteenth century, a thriving urban center known for fine crafts and luxury goods, flourishing service and entertainment industries, and freelance painters catering to a variegated clientele. Hsü begins by sketching in the characteristics and conditions of “painting as a commodity” in this milieu. The most popular subjects were flowers and fruit, often in color; figural scenes relevant to the local urban experience...