Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Anna Ladd studied drawing and sculpture with Bela Pratt and Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and in France with Auguste Rodin. In France, she was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

She married Maynard Ladd, a Boston physician, who was in charge of the American Red Cross hospital near Toulouse, France during World War I.

Her specialty was portrait busts, bas reliefs, public commemorative sculpture including fountains and soldier monuments. Making a plaster form and then a copper plate, she made life-like facial masks, more than 70 of them, for disfigured World War I soldiers whom she met through her husband's work.

Living primarily in Massachusetts but also having a home in Santa Barbara, California, Anna Ladd was a member of the National Sculpture Society, the Guild of Boston Artists, the Copley Society, North Shore Art Association and the San Diego Art Association. Her sculpture was widely exhibited including at the Paris Salon, the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy and the San Francisco Exposition of 1915.

Source:
Jack, El-Hai, 'Anna Ladd's Masks: Mending WWI's Scars', "The History Channel Magazine", Hykt/august 2005, V. 3, No. 4, pp.26-31
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"