Abastenia St. Leger Eberle

Abastenia St. Leger Eberle (1878–1942) was an American sculptor. A native of Webster City, Iowa, her father was a doctor and her mother a musician. Her family later moved to Kansas, then Missouri, before settling in Canton, Ohio. She initially studied to become a professional musician, but her father noticed her talent for modelling, and she received lessons from one of his patients before enrolling at the Art Students League in New York City.

She achieved early success with her sculpture "Men and Bull", created in collaboration with Anna Hyatt, which was shown at the 1904 exhibition of the Society of American Artists. In 1906 she was elected to the National Sculpture Society.Susan Casteras, Abastenia St. Leger Eberle's White Slave.", "Woman's Art Journal" (Spring/Summer 1986) pp. 32-36.]

St. Leger Eberle worked in a style related to Art Nouveau and the New Sculpture movement. She produced mainly portrait sculpture and decorative work for fountains. Some of her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, she is best known for figurative works that combined realism with emphasis on the flow of drapery and movement.

Her most famous piece was "The White Slave", which was exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, and which caused "a storm of violent controversy" because of its shocking combination of contemporary realism and the nude. The sculpture represented child prostitution, which at the time was euphemistically called white slavery.

Following this success she created a number of sculptures depicting working class children from the Lower East Side of New York, depicting them at play and work. These represeanted "the vitality of the city's immigrant population". By 1930 she was forced to leave New York because of financial and health problems. She settled in Westport, Connecticut.

Eberle believed that art should have a social function, writing that artists "had no right to work as an individualist with no responsibility to others. [Artists] must see for people - reveal them to themselves and each other."

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[http://www.bartleby.com/65/eb/Eberle-A.html Columbia Encyclopedia entry]