Artwork Data

Title

Cornelis van Bijnckershoek

Artist

Albert Termote

Year

1938

Material

brons

Dimensions

h. 155 cm

Artwork Location

Address

Korte Voorhout, Den Haag

City district

Centrum

GPS data

52.083168702261, 4.3170861510651 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

It is said of sculptor Albert Termote that his Flemish training gave his work the necessary 'virtuosity and drama'. His sculpture of the jurist Cornelis van Bijnckershoek (1673-1743) does not immediately show this 'virtuosity and drama'. Termote even approached his subject here in a subdued, classical manner. This may have been related to the sculpture's location near the Supreme Court - the highest legal body in the Netherlands. Perhaps also because of the person depicted - one of the greatest jurists in Dutch history. Or was it the set preconditions? We will probably never know exactly.

Termote found room to show his 'virtuosity and drama' in the details: the clothes hang loosely around the famous lawyer and the luxuriantly curling hair frames the face. With his right hand he makes a delicate gesture and in his left he holds a roll of paper.

Termote was a much-loved artist in The Hague's commissioning circuit. He left The Hague several sculptures. Like the granite animal figures at the bridge ends near the Vaillantplein in 1939. A year earlier, together with five other sculpture celebrities, he was asked to participate in the renovation of the obsolete building of the Supreme Court on the Plein from 1861. They were commissioned to make bronze statues of six historical Dutch jurists. The statues, however, are no longer in their original place, the Supreme Court steps on the Plein. The building on the Plein was demolished at the end of the 1980s due to the expansion of the Lower House. The statues then moved to Kazernestraat. On a small square in front of the new Supreme Court building, they lost some of their original allure and function. With the move in 2016 to the new building on Korte Voorhout, the statues have been restored to their former glory.

Close