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"Temporary is allowed to last", said initiator Vincent van der Kraan on 5 May 1989 at the unveiling of the statue. It adorns the top of his building on the corner of Van Kinsbergenstraat. In principle, the work of art would remain there for one year. But in 2018, it is still there. The reason was that Zeeheldenkwartier was slowly beginning to recover after a period of dilapidation. The new building was almost ready, too. Local resident Van der Kraan wanted to do something to liven up the neighbourhood in general and the Witte de Withstraat in particular.

Van der Kraan had a clearly recognisable work of art in mind for his street. For this purpose, he commissioned the artist Aris de Bakker from The Hague. In collaboration, a sculpture of Witte Cornelisz de With (1599-1658), a well-known 17th-century Dutch fleet captain, was created. This sea hero - or pirate, De With's reputation is not always positive - ended up on the tram. This tram ran through the Witte de Withstraat until the 1970s.

It is not surprising that Van der Kraan knocked on De Bakker's door. At the time, the artist had made more figurative sculptures, such as a large Piet Hein sculpture that stood for a year elsewhere in the same neighbourhood. These sculptures marked a transition to the more abstract and conceptual work that De Bakker would later produce. Time, impermanence and the malleability of life are central to this work. The choice of materials in De Bakker's later work is typical: ice, salt and regularly gardens and nature itself. Very different from his early images of people and historical figures.