Richard Roland Holst

Along with his wife, Holst was a socialist and a close friend of the leftist writer, Herman Gorter.

Although most of his works were small in scale, he also created murals for the Beurs van Berlage, the office of the General Diamond Workers' Union of the Netherlands (known as the "Burcht van Berlage [nl]"), and the building of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in The Hague.

He was heavily influenced by the ideas of the writer, William Morris; treating art as an idealistic, service-oriented activity that emphasized purity and clear form.

[...] The work that Mrs Van Gogh would like best is the one that was the most bombastic and sentimental, the one that made her shed the most tears; she forgets that her sorrow is turning Vincent into a god.

They were created in 1940/41 by the sculptor, Hildo Krop, but could not be installed until after the war, due to opposition from the German occupation forces.

Richard Roland Holst (1910)