Man digging in his backyard thought he'd hit an old fence post. Instead, a 150-pound woman's sculpture peeked out
Although no one has been able to trace the exact origins of the sculpture, speculations are that it could be by an artist named Ralph Stackpole
When Greg Gatwood picked up his shovel and started levelling the soil in his backyard, all he expected was smoother ground and probably a spot for a new fence. But while he raked rocks and dug into the dirt, his shovel hit something hard about two feet underground. As his suspicious eyes gazed down, he couldn’t believe what he had found. Emerging from the dirt was a 150-pound bust of a woman, seemingly created by a skilled artist. Now, his house has turned into a museum exhibiting the great art legacy of San Francisco, according to an August 9, 2026 report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mystery creeping under the dirt
Gatwood, a 65-year-old landscape contractor and landscaper, initially mistook the solid object for construction debris and rubble. "I was doing a little grading, and I came across what I thought was a piece of concrete, rectangular, and I thought, I’ll just pop it out and throw it to the side," Gatwood told KTVU. But the deeper he dug, the more fascinated he became. Rising from the underground was this woman’s head and neck, buttressed on a rectangular base.
'Masterful piece of work'
Analysis revealed that the sculpture was 150 pounds and measured about 22 inches wide, 18 inches high, and 10 inches deep. “It’s exciting,” Gatwood told NBC Bay Area, “It’s probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever dug up in a yard, and I’ve dug up a lot of things over the years.” When he pulled out the piece from the soil and showed it to his wife, Judy Gittelsohn, who’s a painter, she immediately sensed that it was the work of a skilled hand. "To get that smooth transition in carving a stone, any kind of stone, is really a masterful piece of work," Gittelsohn told KTVU.
Endless speculations
To trace the origin of the sculpture and the story of how it ended up in their backyard, Gittelsohn consulted about 50 scholars, art experts, and fellows, and one of them was Ralph Stackpole. Gittelsohn and her fellows suspect that the sculpture was created either by Stackpole or one of his students. “His disciples, his students, created this similar look of the flattened nose and broad face,” she explained.
One reason for this hypothesis is the location of their house. Their two-storey house in the Russian Hill neighbourhood sits in proximity to the San Francisco Art Institute, where Stackpole once taught art. The school closed in 2022, but the building still stands close to their house.
A gift that tumbled down
Another speculation was that the sculpture may have been a gift that fell off its wooden pedestal and got buried in the overgrown bush. The couple also suspects that the bust could be from the Golden Gate International Exposition, which was a World’s Fair held at Treasure Island in 1939. On the other hand, Historian Anne Schnoebelen from the Treasure Island Museum believes that the sculpture might have been created by Adaline Kent or Helen Phillips, two of Stackpole’s students who lived nearby.
According to the US Commission of Fine Arts, Stackpole was a renowned artist, sculptor, and painter of his time. After he completed his art training in 1911, he became recognized as a leading artist in San Francisco. During the Great Depression, he would paint murals for Coit Tower, and for nearly two decades, he worked as an art instructor at the California School of Fine Arts, apart from creating his own works.
'History mystories'
Nevertheless, the mystery of why the sculpture was buried in their yard remains unsolved. “It could have been somebody who didn’t like the way it turned out, or maybe Stackpole didn’t like it,” Schnoebelen told the SF Chronicle. “There is a reason somebody buried it, and maybe they don’t want people talking about it.” Intrigued by the discovery, Ken Middlebrook from the History San Jose organization told KTVU, "I call these history ‘mystories’! We find these things either in the ground or in a box, or even in a newspaper, and you kind of sit there and scratch your head and say, ‘What?’"
More on Scoop Upworthy
Newly discovered underwater temple of Aphrodite leaves everyone in wonder and awe
Share on Facebook
