Abastenia St. Leger Eberle (April 6, 1878 – February 26, 1942)[1] was an American sculptor known for her energetic, small bronze sculptures depicting poor immigrants on New York's City's Lower East Side.

[2] Her most famous piece, The White Slave, representing child prostitution, caused controversy when exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show.

[3] Born on April 6, 1878, in Webster City, Iowa, Mary Abastenia St. Leger was the daughter of a mother who was a musician and father who was a doctor in the US Army.

Eberle's mother offered piano lessons and encouraged her to pursue her musical talent, which she displayed at a young age.

After a while, Eberle became so desperate to receive some art training that she took it upon herself to get other locals registered to fill spots when she learned that sculptor Frank Vogan would come to Canton, Ohio to teach a class.

[4] At some point in Eberle's early twenties, she went to visit her family in Puerto Rico, where her father had been relocated as a U.S. Army doctor.

Eberle's piece Puerto Rican Mother and Child (1901) was the first in which she expressed the everyday life of lower-class people.

Eberle made such an impression on Barnard that eventually he left her in charge of the classroom when he could not make it to lead the class.

She achieved early success with her sculpture Men and Bull, created in collaboration with Anna Hyatt Huntington, which was shown at the 1904 exhibition of the Society of American Artists.

[4] Her The White Slave was exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, and caused "a storm of violent controversy" because of its shocking combination of contemporary realism and the nude.

"[2] That summer Eberle spent time as a settlement worker on the Lower East Side in order to "study the people there and the conditions under which they live, to be near them and to learn from them."

[4] Following this success she created a number of sculptures depicting working-class children from the Lower East Side, at play and work.

[4] Later in Eberle's career, she set up her studio right in New York's Lower East Side, after fearing her work was losing its proletarian character.

[2] The work White Slave is Eberle's response to newspaper stories describing the fate of low-income immigrant women forced into prostitution to survive.

[5] Eberle submitted works to the mixed sculpturing category of the art competitions at the 1928 and 1932 Summer Olympics, but did not win a medal.