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It was also in a very harsh winter, when I carved a horse in wood with my father's chisels. I was five years old then. I have been sculpting ever since. Horses are still my special favourite. Wherever I can, on bridges or ornaments, I use them,' says sculptor Albert Termote in 'Het Binnenhof' of 28 March 1947. The article is illustrated by the well-known prancing horse with woman and child on the bridge near the Vaillantplein in 1939.

To 'Horse with woman and child' belongs 'Horse with child' on the other bridge railing. With their luxuriant manes, muscular bodies, wide-open nostrils and upright front legs, the horses have a Baroque exuberance that is rarely seen in Dutch sculpture. The slender riders seem insignificant compared to their monumental horses, but are nevertheless rendered in the same Baroque style.

Especially in his equestrian statues, Termote's Flemish nature flashes. The frail horsemen with their thin limbs reveal the influence of the Belgian sculptor George Minne (1866-1941), where he worked as an executor during his training at the Academy of Ghent.
In the First World War (1914-1918) Termote fled from Belgium to the neutral Netherlands. After some wanderings, he settled permanently in Voorburg in 1922. There his artistic career really took off. He received assignment after assignment. In 1938, the municipality of The Hague asked him to decorate the ends and the railings of the bridge at the Vaillantplein.

For the statues in the middle of the railings, 13,000 kilos of limestone were rolled into his studio. Assistants cut away about five thousand kilos of it. The artist always did the final finishing himself, in his own words 'to put the sentiment into it'.