Eberle, Abastenia St. Leger

Eberle, Abastenia St. Leger

(ăb'əstē`nēə sānt lĕj`ər ĕb`ərlē), 1878–1942, American sculptor, b. Webster City, Iowa, studied at the Art Students League, New York City. She produced a number of portrait sculptures and executed several fountains. Much of her work was drawn from her observation of life on the streets of New York. Her Girl on Roller Skates is in the Metropolitan Museum.

Eberle, (Mary) Abastenia St. Leger

(1878–1942) sculptor; born in Webster City, Iowa. She was raised in Ohio and Puerto Rico, and went to study at the Art Students League in New York City (1899–1902), where she spent most of the rest of her life (she studied in Naples, Italy from 1907–08). Ahead of many of her generation, she rejected the classical tradition and espoused the view that the artist should portray the realities of contemporary society. She specialized in small bronzes depicting the people of the lower east side, as in Windy Doorstep (1910), but her most provocative statue was The White Slave (1913), intended as a protest against prostitution.