Text

As if she could get up out of her garden chair, she sits there proudly with a straight back, her dachshund and poodle on her lap, opposite the main entrance of the Arendsdorp apartment building on the Wassenaarseweg. This was her domain, the estate Oostduin. Marie Countess Van Bylandt (1874-1968) had her summer residence there, but in the Second World War it was hit by a waved-off German V2 rocket. She did not want to return there and had the house demolished in 1946. What remains on the Wassenaarseweg are the tea cupola in the middle of the park, the guardhouse and the house 'De Rietjes'.

The countess also owned the surrounding lands: the area between the North Sea dunes and the Haagse Hout. These lands were designated by the municipality of The Hague in 1911 as building grounds for Berlage's expansion plan. The first buildings were completed in 1915.
In 1964, the Countess had already generously arranged for her entire estate to be housed in a foundation: the M.A.O.C. Countess van Bylandt Foundation. She died in 1968, unmarried and childless, leaving everything to the foundation. With the inheritance the foundation supports the general interest of people and animals within the Empire in Europe and the needy Dutch people.

Her sculpture by the Rotterdam sculptor Evert den Hartog was unveiled in 1988. Den Hartog had a strong preference for ceramics at the start of his artistic career, until after a few years he decided to cast his sculptures in bronze. In the bronze foundry he got to know the material through and through. His sculptures of man and animal clearly show this. He works out all the details precisely. For example, the ribbon on the countess's hat. Den Hartog often captures an uninhibited moment, an intimate or still moment. In this case the frail little lady, alone for a moment with her beloved lapdogs.