CLEVELAND—Sometimes you can find treasure right in your own backyard. That's what happened to an Ohio resident, anyway, who four decades ago bought a home in Cleveland that came complete with its contents and a four-foot bronze statue of a woman carrying a water vessel in the backyard.

Last week, the anonymous homeowner sold the work — which turns out to be a 1931 sculpture by Mahmoud Mokhtar, the Egyptian-born, Paris-trained artist known as the father of modern Egyptian art and has a museum dedicated to his work in Cairo — at the Cleveland Auction Co. for $118,000. The sum, paid by an unnamed collector, is the most ever fetched by a Mokhtar bronze at auction.

Read more at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.