s.l., seconde moitié du 19e siècle - second half of the 19th century , 2 verticals rolls 131 x 28,5 cm or 51.57 x 11.22 inches ended by 2 sticks (1 bambou) and protected laterally by an line strip.
Ink on paper. Brush Chinese calligraphy autograph on vertical rolls leaves, work, of the politician and the leading reformer Kang You-Wei (1858-1927) whose had a theorical approach of the calligraphy. He calligraphs here a sentence "We are on the open sea, it is necessary to keep the past by looking to the future". Kang Youwei apply to painting his principle of "reviving the old in order to elvove the new". "He decried the free sketch style literati painting of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties but approved of the meticulously detailed academic style that traces back to the Song dynasty" (James Cahill). The characters K'ang Yu-wei executed move in a clean, classic simplicity, unadorned and unaffected, and without that quickly tarnished sheen of merely novel, the fetchingly precious, the different, which marks the styles of the others calligraphers treading the same path, notably Chin Nung and Chêng Hsieh. K'ang Yu-wei is particularly good in large characters, sometimes so large that they had to be done with a broom instead of a brush. Signature and seal of the artist. Browned paper. Cfr. Ch'en Chih-Mai, Chinese Calligraphers and their Art, p. 154 ; Three Thousand Years of Chinese painting, Yale University Press, p. 307 .