Of Serge van Druten, two athletes and an angel
A difficult request
In the summer of 2022 I was confronted with a difficult request. My dear colleague Serge van Druten↑ was working on the two limestone statues for the restoration of the Scholten monument in the Stadspark in Groningen. But it didn't go well, he had to be operated on his back and wasn't able to work for a while.
We agreed that he could work in my studio after the operation, so that we could help him move the statues and help him out- if needed. He'd be starting up very cautiousy and very slowly start working again. And as planned, we got moving. But after a only few days it went wrong: All the ironwork in his back broke off and he had to be operated on again. There was some pressure to this job, it had to be delivered on time, and he asked me if I wanted to finish it. Of course I would have preferred that he could have done it himself, while enjoying working in his own studio. A while earlier I had already carved an angel for him, also because of a surgery. Of course you'd help out a colleague, but knowing that this work was his passion and that he always used to dive into it with a lot of energy, I had a very double feeling about it.
A long series of operations
That back operation later turned out to be one in a long series. He went in and out of the hospital for more than three years, over and over again, and to make it more difficult, he also contracted a degenerative muscle disease. He was never able to sculpt again. I've known Serge since 1993 and from 1995 to 2010 I used to work with him on a daily base, that's why I was very sad when he passed on Wednesday 22 January 2025 , in hospital, 57 years old. He was a special, expressive person, an artist at heart, and has left me with many good memories.
Car against the monument
The Scholten monument in the Stadspark in Groningen was erected in 1931 for industrialist Jan Evert Scholten, as a gift from his friends. Scholten had donated this city park to the city, so that's probably why they considered it a good place for the monument. The Sculptor Abraham Hesselink carved most parts for the monument, which consists of a pedestal with a bust of Scholten on it. This is flanked by two walls on which bronze plaquettes are mounted that refer to horse breeding and trot racing, two of Scholten's favourite pastimes. Next to the pedestal are two children in sportswear and on the corners of the monument the coat-of-arms of Stad en Ommelanden have been placed. It has sat there all this time, decaying a little bit over time, Until on Sunday morning 20 September 2020 a car against crashed into the monument with a huge bang and caught fire. The driver was killed instantly.
Reconstruction
The monument needd to be restored. The two statues were considerably damaged and after some consultation ended up at Serge's place to be reconstructed and resculpted in French limestone. All loose parts were kept on Serges request, so that he could fit them together and supplement the missing pieces with plaster. After reconstructing the statues, he coloured the plaster with acrylic paint, so that it was almost impossible to see that it was all repairs. He ordered the new stone and asked me if I could cut out the two statues on my copying saw machine. Because this machine is a contour saw machine with a saw blade of 40 cm and therefore cannot copy all all of the details, the sides of the statues would not be properly copied, but that was not a real setback. Serge was enough of a professional to easily take care of that.
Copying
I contour sawed the two statues out of a new block of limestone. The horizontal saw blade could not copy the space between the arm and the back side, but most details were neatly cut out. Then Serge came and started carving the first statue, taking it easy, starting on the young male figure first. After Serge needed to pull out, the sculptures sat there for a long time. Eventually we came to a decision, We worked out a fee and I carveded the sculpture for him. The carving job was considerably simplified by the sawing machine, But as you can see, there is still plenty of measuring and carving to do before you can call it a full-fledged copy.
After that, I copied the girl. They're a couple of two stiff athletes, And especially the girl just stands there as if she is doing shopping instead of throwing hammers. The young man with his peculiar eyes looks a little Indonesian, also because of his build. A typical image of that time, shall we say.
Gallery
(Read on below!)
Serge as a sculptor
I also collaborated a lot with Serge van Druten after the years that we were employed at the Mooy sculpture firm in Amersfoort together, among other things for the St John's Cathedral in Den Bosch, The Netherlands (statues and angels), the St. Eusebius's Church in Arnhem (the Netherlands) (carving ornaments), the Dom Cathedral in Utrecht (tuffstone crockets and large crockets in basalt lava) and of course a lot for the Utrecht Dom Tower in Utrecht (finials, gargoyles, crockets and ornaments).
Video portrait of a sculptor
But Serge also had his own projects, Such as its facade reliefs for the commemoration of the landing of St. Boniface in the Netherlands. If you want to know more about this, I'd especially recommend watching the videos that Hugo Rikken from Fullscreen Film made in Serge's studio. A beautifully recognizable portrait of a craftsman and artist, that can be found on the channel of Fullscreen Film on YouTube, by entering the name of Serge van Druten, or by clicking on this link to go through the entire playlist: Videos about Serge van Druten on YouTube.
An angel being passed on
Serge was, as I wrote above, suffering from crumbling back vertebrae even before the Groningen athletes. Because of an operation, he asked me 2022 if I wanted to carve the very last of the five angels he would copy into new stone, so the last one would be finished by me. He had reconstructed this angel with plastiline and I carved it in new stone for him. The committee came to inspect it t my place and everything was to their satisfaction.
This angel was neo -gothic and date from the 1880. It was carved at the time in Udelfanger sandstone, and the intention was to do it the same way again this time around.. Only at the time they had carved it with the layers upright unfortunately. This means that, just like with Pope Leo and Thomas Aquinas, the layers of the stone are running through the sculpture vertically. This causes the danger that whole slices of stone could come down at once. It was quite a challenge for the restoration team to find a block in the quarry from which 1 entire angel could be made. The layer thickness in the quarry (the bank) averages only about 90 cms wide, and these angels are 125 cms tall. But it worked out just fine!
Gallery: In Principio Erat Verbum-angel, Den Bosch
(Read on below!)
