Sibyl Anikeef (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Marie Augusta Phillipson; 1896 – 1997) was an American photographer. She worked for the

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...

, and lived variously in New York City, San Diego, Chicago, Carmel by the Sea, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. She is best known for her portrayal of the Monterey Peninsula and portraits of fisherman, still lives, and landscapes. She used various names including Sibyl Brainerd, and Sibyl Brainerd Freed.

Biography

She was born as Marie Augusta Phillipson on March 29, 1896, in Chicago, Illinois, to parents Belle Brainerd from Colorado, and Emil Phillipson (or alternate spelling Phillipsohn) from Germany. In her early childhood she was raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother died in 1905, and she and her siblings were raised by her maternal grandparents Wesley and Marie Brainerd in

Lomaland Lomaland was a Theosophical community located in Point Loma in San Diego, California from 1900 to 1942. Theosophical Society leader Katherine Tingley founded it in 1900 as a school, cultural center, and residential facility for her followers. T ...

, a theosophical community in Point Loma, San Diego, California. The children studied at '' Madame Tingley’s Theosophical Institute''. Their grandparents died in 1908 and 1910, and afterwards she changed her name to "Sibyl Brainerd" to honor them. Their maternal grandmother's brother Lyman Judson Gage moved to Lomaland and took care of the children after their grandparents died. Anikeef was a photographer for the Federal Art Project, and through that experience she met photographer

Edward Weston Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." ...

. He later became her lifelong friend, and someone she both models for and served as her model. Photography containing her as a model (by Weston) can be found in the museum collections at Syracuse University Art Museum,

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. She died on July 27, 1997, in New York City. Her own photography work can be found in the museum and library collections at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the library special collections at

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

, and the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

Personal life

On October 21, 1921, she married her first husband in New York City, Vasile Anikeef (or alternate spelling Anikeyev) an opera singer from Russia. Together they had one son, Lyman, born in Moscow in 1927. Her second husband was Simon Freed, an atomic scientist, they were married on May 5, 1943, in Chicago.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Anikeef, Sibyl 1896 births 1997 deaths 20th-century American women photographers 20th-century American photographers Artists from San Diego Federal Art Project artists Photographers from Chicago Photographers from California American people of German descent