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Like an abstract composition of lines and planes; that is how the hefty sculpture on the Buitenhof, to the right of the entrance to the Binnenhof, looks when viewed fleetingly. And yet, on closer inspection, it is unmistakably the politician Willem Drees senior (1886-1988). Sculptor Eric Claus succeeded in capturing precisely the silhouette of Drees with sober means. Claus placed the portrait like a photograph in a double frame. The two frames are at right angles to each other, so that it seems as if the smaller frame is hanging in the larger one. Nothing could be further from the truth. The heavy, approximately 4 metres high sculpture is firmly anchored in the ground. Accompanying the statue is a large dot (12 m in diameter) in bright red brick. It reminds one of the elections as well as the red of the Social Democrats.
Originally, the statue of Drees stood in front of the entrance to the now demolished council chamber on Groenmarkt. Drees was an alderman in The Hague from 1919 to 1933. But the Buitenhof is a more appropriate location for a monument to this post-war politician of note. Having started out as a stenographer, his political ambitions brought him successively to the position of Minister, Prime Minister and finally Minister of State. Under his leadership, both decolonisation and reconstruction took place. Drees was also instrumental in the founding of the Labour Party. The Noodwet Ouderdomsvoorziening (Emergency Old-Age Pensions Act), which he introduced in 1947 as Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health, earned him the nickname "Vadertje Drees".
No wonder that a monument to him was erected in the year of Drees's death. The style in which Claus created his portrait of this extremely popular politician is typical of his working methods and formal idiom of the 1980s. At that time graphic and relief-like forms dominated. In fact his sculptures increasingly resembled the medals with which he was very successful and which he produced alongside his sculptures.