This gorgeous marble sculpture falls in that magic area between abstraction and representation. It loosely depicts a woman combing her hair, but really is about the beautiful curves and lines. Stunning veined alabaster. A substantial sculpture, weighing in at 50 pounds. I've included a shot showing the striations the artist carved into the woman's hair. Comes mounted on a wooden base. Here are some biographical details about the artist gleaned from AskArt, very impressive to know his work was shown at the Met, arguably America's premier art museum, in 1951, and to be called "preeminent among American sculptors" by a critic at a major paper is also notable!

"Ralph N. Hurst
September 4, 1918 - December 7, 2003

Since his first major competitive exhibition "American Sculpture 1951" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and "Art USA: '58" at Madison Square Garden in New York, Ralph Hurst continued, in the words of Patricia Boyd Wilson of The Christian Science Monitor in April 1973, to stand preeminent among sculptors in the United States."

Painter, ceramist, designer, architect, and most notably, sculptor, Hurst traversed the art range. From portraiture to photography, from Museum curator of the Ogunquit, Maine Museum of Art, to art educator, from architectural bas-reliefs at Florida State University to interior and portrait bas-reliefs, and his plethora of three-dimensional carvings of figures, birds, animals, and fish, he has archival documentation of thousands of works.

Exhibiting from Maine to California, one-man exhibitions and galleries from coast to coast, Hurst enjoyed thousands of collectors, both corporate and private, all over the United States, Canada, and Europe who enjoy the beauty and tactile pleasure of his art."