About this work
The eye lands first on a contradiction: a man calmly at play while his arm is being cut to the bone. The central figure is Guan Yu, the legendary 3rd-century Chinese military leader, whose arm aches from an old arrow wound — a poisoned one, his physician Hua Tuo has determined, the toxins having seeped deep into the bone itself. Hua Tuo cuts the arm open and scrapes away the infected tissue.
While others around them cringe, Guan Yu drinks, eats, jokes, and — the pivot of the entire composition — plays Go, showing no sign of pain as his blood flows freely.
The hanging scroll measures an imposing 140.2 × 68.3 cm on silk, mounted to over two metres.
Ōi's vertical composition uses vivid colour to surgical effect: Guan Yu's veins pulse blue beneath his skin, the glistening musculature is exposed where the doctor has cut deep, and the complex structure of sinews is rendered with precision, while a silk tourniquet is tied above the incision site.
The bowl into which the blood falls is enormous, and absolutely brimming. Behind the scene, sumptuous food and drink in a background still life suggest Guan Yu's intention to enjoy a satisfying meal the moment the ordeal is done.
The episode comes from *The Romance of the Three Kingdoms*, a Chinese novel that enjoyed great popularity during the 18th and 19th centuries among educated Japanese society.
An illustrated edition of the novel had recently been produced by the very studio with which Ōi was affiliated — making her choice of subject both timely and personally resonant. This is the largest surviving painting by the artist.
The dazzling composition, design sense, and palette of colorful mineral pigments in this hanging scroll record her artistic powers at their finest. It stands apart from Ōi's celebrated bijin-ga — her luminous portraits of women — as evidence of a range that her contemporaries rarely gave her credit to show. The small number of works authored by Ōi alone all evince a focused curiosity toward light, space, and shadow — and here, that curiosity bends toward drama, anatomy, and the psychology of composure under extremity.
As wall art, this is a painting that demands a room willing to hold tension. Its tall, narrow format suits high-ceilinged spaces — a hallway with strong natural light, a study, or a reading room where the vertical proportions draw the eye upward. The saturated mineral pig
