Anna Coleman Ladd

Anna Coleman Watts Ladd (July 15, 1878 – June 3, 1939) was an American sculptor in Manchester, Massachusetts, who devoted her time throughout World War I to soldiers who were disfigured by making prosthetic masks for them.

Her sculpture Triton Babies was shown at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. It is now a fountain sculpture in the Boston Public Garden. In 1914, she was founding member of the Guild of Boston Artists and exhibited in both the opening show and the traveling exhibition that followed and where later she held a one-woman show. Her pieces are sold at auction today.

Ladd challenged herself on many artistic fronts and wrote two books, Hieronymus Rides, based on a medieval romance she worked on for years and The Candid Adventurer, a sendup of Boston society in 1913. She also wrote at least two unproduced plays; one of which incorporated the story of a female sculptor who goes to war.

She devoted herself to portraiture and was well regarded. Her portrait of Eleanora Duse was one of only three, that the actress ever allowed.