A routine house valuation in the Cotswolds has revealed that a weathered marble bust left in an English garden for more than 70 years was a rare work by Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, widely regarded as America’s first professional female sculptor. The 1854 sculpture, depicting the Greek mythological figure Daphne, had been treated as an ordinary garden ornament and was covered with lichen. Its discovery has brought renewed attention to one of Hosmer’s earliest works, of which only a small number of marble versions are known to survive.
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