Sowing and reaping (1949) Albert Termote
The National Life Insurance Bank on the Schiekade, established in the Maasstad, was completed by the Rotterdam architect Kees Elffers in 1949. On the street side of the brick building, he places statues of Johan de Witt and Christiaan Huygens, the founders of insurance mathematics, made by sculptor Albert Termote - a specialist in traditional bronze equestrian statues. The oval window is framed by a cornucopia and the saying 'Baet is cons alle schae', which means something like 'Profit comes before everything'. Below this a group of five figures is depicted, representing the different life stages of man. The middle figure is a child holding an hourglass with his left arm and pointing to a sundial with his right hand with a stick. Under the sundial is the year: MCMXLIX (1949).
Albert Termote (Lichtervelde, 1887 - Voorburg, 1978) was a student at the academy in Ghent, among others George Minne and would later teach as Charlotte van Pallandt as a teacher at the Hague academy. He was a traditional sculptor. He made a lot of ecclesiastical art and (equestrian) statues, also often in front of squares in churches. In the The Hague region he received many commissions from Catholic architects from the 1930s. He made many images of saints and in the reconstruction many related assignments in the corner of Wageningen and Limburg.