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The name Carel Kneulman will always be associated with 'The little darling' from 1959 in Amsterdam. Two years earlier, the Amsterdam sculptor had completed 'Jacob and the Angel', which was given a prominent place above the canopy entrance to The Hague's police station on Alexanderplein. The size of the scale model in the garden of Kunstmuseum Den Haag is one third of this monumental version. Together with the monument 'Wind and Water' (Veere) and the Amsterdam Monument for Gerrit van der Veen and the artists' resistance, it belongs to Kneulman's best-known sculptures in public space.

The socially-minded sculptor was a man of the people with a great interest in the acting man and a strong need for action and decisiveness. That explains his fascination for sculptures with main characters who need, strengthen and balance each other. This also applies to Jacob and the angel. Although they are engaged in a fierce battle, they cannot do without each other.

Kneulman depicts both figures in an abstracted tangle of limbs. The small heads are not further elaborated. The sculpture, which is inspired by the cubist work of French sculptor Henri Laurens (1885-1954), is all about struggle and movement: the struggle between good and evil, order and chaos. The dynamism is bursting forth, but is kept in check by well-considered composition and abstraction. Angular forms are combined with voluptuous curves. Kneulman connects figuration and abstraction.

Kneulman started his career as a poet, manifested himself as a singer, had an office job for some time and eventually, after studying with Jan Bronner at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, became a sculptor. During the last years of his life in Darp in Drenthe, Kneulman (who was almost blind by then) returned to poetry. His unconditional love for the militant man continued to resound in it.