Bronze, with the artist's signature and date incised on the upper side of the base , with foundry mark on inner edge, 12 1/2 x 5 x 5 in.
Ex-collection private collection, Pennsylvania.
St. Leger Eberle's most famous work, The White Slave, was exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show, where its content, a barely pubescent nude girl under the cloak of a leering older man in the process of offering her for sale, proved controversial. The juxtaposition of the nude female form as an object of exploitation did not suit the taste of many contemporary observers. St. Leger Eberle's studio was on New York's Lower East Side, and her subjects were predominantly the poor and working-class children who inhabited the neighborhood. She felt a personal responsibility as an artist to "see for people -- reveal them to themselves and each other."
