To Vickie Dahlman-Anger, the mysterious mahogany sculpture of a nude woman found in Metairie 60 years ago is a familiar family heirloom.

Suddenly, it seemed possible. The mysterious wooden lady that Vickie Dahlman-Anger's dad had found caked with mud in Metairie 60 years ago could turn out to be a sculpture by the legendary New Orleans artist Enrique Alferez.

When a newspaper reporter texted a cellphone video inspection of the 4-foot-tall carved mahogany nude to Alferez's daughter, Dr. Tlaloc Alferez, she responded, "It sure looks like something Enrique would do, but how it ended up in the mud, I don't know."

Dahlman-Anger, a retired journalist, and Tlaloc, a retired infectious disease internist, agreed to meet the next day. The sculptor's daughter -- who also happens to be the greatest authority on his work -- needed a better look at the carving before offering a final opinion.

Who was Enrique Alferez?

Born in northern Mexico in 1901, Alferez spent most of his long career in New Orleans, where he ornamented the city with dozens of art deco masterpieces, most of which still survive. The muscular men and women in the "Four Winds" fountain at the Lakefront airport were sculpted by Alferez. Likewise, the bas-relief working men cast on the bridges in City Park, the amazing 41-figure screen over the entrance of the long-unoccupied Charity Hospital building, the huge bronze statue of David on Poydras Street and on and on.

By 1961 Alferez was doubtless New Orleans' most famous artist, both for his audacious sculpture -- the anatomical correctness in many of his artworks offended puritanical onlookers -- and his rambunctious personality, which, at least once, landed him in jail.

But Dahlman-Anger doubts her father, Arthur Dahlman, knew much about him.

Dahlman, a contractor, was new in town. He'd come to the Crescent City from Cincinnati to help build the burgeoning suburbs along Terry Parkway.

Immodest mahogany

Dahlman settled his young family in a newly built stretch of Metairie near the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway that had opened just a few years before. "This was all mud," Dahlman-Anger said of the neighborhood where she still lives. "The streets were here, but not much else."

Maybe in 1964 or thereabouts, Dahlman-Anger's father encountered laborers working in one of the muddy lots near his house. They'd found a statue of a naked woman and placed it on the roadside. Dad asked if he could have it, and thus the mahogany lady became part of the family.

Once it was washed off, it was clear that the sculpture was competently made, but that was all anyone could say about it. There was no signature and no rationale to explain how it ended up where it ended up.

The sculpture took up residence in a corner near the front door. Dahlman-Anger, who was in fifth grade at the time, recalls that she paid the artwork little attention, except when one of her easily embarrassed childhood friends would visit. "My girlfriend used to turn her around," Dahlman-Anger said, to hide some of her mahogany female features from view.

On the trail of the artist

Dahlman-Anger's mother gave her The Lady -- which is how the family sometimes refers to the sculpture -- in the 1980s. She's been the artwork's custodian ever since. The Lady suddenly stepped into the spotlight about two years ago, when a visiting artist friend took interest in the wooden heirloom.

"I saw the sculpture sitting on the floor in the corner of Vickie and Paul's kitchen, and my first impression was that this was definitely not the work of an amateur," said Laurel Felsenfeld, a nurse with a passion for painting. Felsenfeld said she Googled New Orleans early modern artists and found Alferez.

Hoping to solve the puzzle of the lost-and-found artwork, Felsenfeld visited the New Orleans Museum of Art, where an employee led her to a biography of Alferez by Katie Bowler Young. As Felsenfeld turned the pages, she became convinced Enrique was the maker.

There, right on the cover, the renowned sculptor is resting his hand on a wooden female nude that could be The Lady's cousin. Both are highly textured, both are unfinished. Eureka! Maybe.

Disposable art

In an interview last week, Young pointed out that discovering a discarded Alferez could be possible because he was known to destroy and dispose of sculptures occasionally.

There were two reasons for doing so. First, Young said, he didn't want to saturate the market with artworks, thereby depressing his own prices. Plus, keeping surplus work meant he would have to rent storage space.

Was it possible that the artist jettisoned art near the lake, on an undeveloped edge of the city? Well, it wasn't impossible, was it?

Based on the value of somewhat similar, wooden Alferez sculptures, The Lady could be worth between $50,000 and $70,000, according to Kristina Larson, co-director of Octavia Gallery. If it was confirmed as an authentic Alferez, that is.

Judgment

Dahlman-Anger, her brother Marc, and her husband Paul -- who cradled The Lady in his arms -- met with Tlaloc at the Magazine Street art showplace on Nov. 8.

The family was, of course, anxious to receive Tlaloc's judgment. It wasn't about the value of the work, Dahlman-Anger said; she didn't plan to sell it. It was just the delicious possibility that Dad's muddy treasure was really a treasure after all.

But the news wasn't what she had hoped. After examining the sculpture, Tlaloc said the Lady was probably produced by a student or aspiring sculptor who might have modeled their style on her famous father's.

Finished or not, the face lacked the fundamental structure that Alferez would have certainly imposed. The hands -- always a precious part of a carving for the master anatomist -- were disproportionate. The axilla -- the joints of the arms and the torso -- were less than subtle. And the breasts, Tlaloc said, were just "too perky."

Nope, Tlaloc concluded, it wasn't a real Enrique Alferez, though she wished it had been. Based on texted photos, Alferez biographer Young also expressed her doubts. "I didn't see elements of his finished work," she said.

Advancing the plot

True, Tlaloc said, her father did destroy and dispose of artworks.

"When we would go to Mexico," she said, "he would tear up all the drawings and smash the sculptures." But he went a step further. "He would ride with the dump truck to the dump," she said, to be sure his creations wouldn't reappear.

Dahlman-Anger was disappointed but philosophical "I would have loved if it had been an Alferez," she said, "but I feel like we've reached a piece of knowledge we didn't have before." Who knows, Dahlman-Anger said, maybe someone will come forward to reveal The Lady's real identity.

"We still don't know who did it," Tlaloc said, "but we've advanced the plot."