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Operating on Guan Yu's Arm | musefully
Katsushika Ōi. Operating on Guan Yu's Arm, 1840s. hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on silk, Mounted: 206.7 x 73.1 cm (81 3/8 x 28 3/4 in.); Painting: 140.2 x 68.3 cm (55 3/16 x 26 7/8 in.). Kelvin Smith Fund, 1998.178. CC0.
Operating on Guan Yu's Arm
1840s
Katsushika Ōi
Katsushika Ōi (Japanese, c. 1800-after 1857)
Japanese Art
Operating on Guan Yu's Arm, 1840s. Katsushika Ōi (Japanese, c. 1800-after 1857). Hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on silk; mounted: 206.7 x 73.1 cm (81 3/8 x 28 3/4 in.); painting: 140.2 x 68.3 cm (55 3/16 x 26 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Kelvin Smith Fund 1998.178 Ukiyo-e artists’ subject matter extended to popular literature. Katsushika Ōi used color to great effect in her gruesome version of an episode from a 14th-century Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Ōi portrayed the passage in which legendary 3rd-century military leader Guan Yu undergoes a bone scraping to remove poisons received from an arrow wound. In this sensationalist portrayal, Guan Yu’s attendants cower at the sight of his bloody arm while he remains unflinchingly focused on his game. As a woman, Ōi was an outlier in her era, but her talent was allowed to shine due to collaboration with her father, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), the famed designer of the print known as TheGreat Wave. This is the largest surviving painting by the artist.