Sea Treasures

Modeled 1911, cast 1913–14

Abastenia St. Leger Eberle (American, 1878–1942)

In Sea Treasures, an adolescent girl inspects marine life along the shore at Coney Island, a popular leisure destination across classes at the turn of the 20th century. Her hiked-up skirt, rolled sleeves, and awkward pose—sensitively rendered by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle—suggest a figure grounded in the real world, caught in a moment of thought and action all her own. Born in Iowa and later based in New York, Eberle was a settlement-house worker and a sculptor who principally depicted women from urban immigrant communities in small-scale bronzes.

Status: On View, Gallery 272
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Abastenia St. Leger Eberle
Title: Sea Treasures
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Cast 1913–1914
Medium: Bronze
Inscriptions: Signed and inscribed, on base, cast: A STL. Eberle. / 1913
Dimensions: 24.9 × 36 × 27.4 cm (9 13/16 × 14 3/16 × 10 13/16 in.)
Credit Line: Roger and J. Peter McCormick Endowment Fund; purchased with funds provided by the Roy and Irene Rettinger Foundation
Reference Number: 2023.1377

R. G. McIntyre, “The Broad Vision of Abastenia Eberle,” Arts and Decoration 3, no. 10 (Aug. 1913), 334 (ill.).
“Exhibitions at the Galleries,” Arts and Decoration 4, no. 6 (Apr. 1914), 239 (ill.).
Louise R. Noun, Abastenia St. Leger Eberle: Sculptor (1878–1942), exh. cat. (Des Moines Art Center, 1980), cat. 17a (ill.)
Susan P. Casteras, “Abastenia St. Leger Eberle’s White Slave,” Woman’s Art Journal 7, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 1986), 33.
Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893–1939 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 30–31 (ill.).
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors: A History of Working Women in Three Dimensions (Boston: G. K Hall, 1990), 216.

New York, Association of American Painters and Sculptors, International Exhibition of Modern Art, Feb. 17–Mar. 15, 1913, cat. 672, as Group Coney Island, Sculpture (related cast).
New York, Macbeth Gallery, Exhibition of Sculpture by Chester Beach, Abastenia St. L. Eberle, Mahonri Young, Feb. 17–Mar. 2, 1914, cat. 19, as Wading, and possibly cat. 20, as Seaweed (related casts).
Paris, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Salon de 1914, cat. 1782, as Groupe de baigneuses (related cast).
Washington, DC, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Small Bronzes by American Sculptors, 1930–32 (related cast).
Des Moines, IA, Des Moines Art Center, Abastenia St. Leger Eberle: Sculptor (1878-1942), July 15–Aug. 17, 1980, cat. 17a, as Child Picking Seaweed (related cast).

Sold Christie’s, New York, Mar. 16, 1995, lot 111; to Conner–Rosenkranz, New York [this and the following according to email from Joel Rosenkranz, Jan. 10, 2023; copy in curatorial object file]; sold to Bruce and Susan Lueck, Camden, SC, Oct. 1995; sold to Conner–Rosenkranz, New York, Apr. 2023; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2023.

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