Anna Coleman Ladd

Anna Coleman LaddAnna Coleman Watts Ladd (July 15, 1878 – June 3, 1939) was an American sculptor who traveled around the world in order to hone her skills. She is most well-known for her contributions to war efforts during World War I, but she was an accomplished sculptor, author, and playwright before the war began. She called many places home throughout her lifetime, including Pennsylvania, Boston, Rome, Paris, and California.

Biography Anna Coleman Watts was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on July 15, 1878, to John and Mary Watts. It is believed that she did not seek out formal training for the arts. Instead, she moved to Europe for 25 years, working in various studios. On June 26th, 1905, she married Maynard Ladd, a physician, in Salisbury, England, and then moved to Boston, MA. There is no evidence that their two daughters were allowed to travel to Paris with them, likely staying behind in Boston.

In 1936, Ladd retired with her husband to Santa Barbara, California. On June 2nd, 1939, Ladd died from an undisclosed illness at sixty years old. The other protagonist feels as if she does not and cannot understand the struggles of those less fortunate than her. Unintentionally, this foreshadows Ladd's wartime experience. She also wrote two unproduced plays, one incorporating the story of a female sculptor who goes to war.

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

After World War I, she depicted a decayed corpse on a barbed wire fence for a war memorial commissioned by the Manchester-by-the-Sea American Legion.

WWI and the Birth of Anaplastology Anaplastology is defined as the combination of art and science, using design and engineering concepts to create removable prostheses, typically for the face and head. World War I saw a dramatic expansion of the field, likely due to modern warfare weapons and techniques never used before.

Prosthetics work Ladd stayed on the home front when her husband was sent to Paris; in her search for ways to help the war effort, she learned about the work of Francis Derwent Wood in London through C. Lewis Hind. Wood developed lifelike masks to help soldiers with facial deformities. Through correspondence with Wood, Ladd decided on a new process for creating masks using gutta-percha. When sculpting the masks, the lips were created to be slightly opened, to allow the victim to speak or smoke with relative ease. Ladd’s work is now called anaplastology. Anaplastology is the art, craft, and science of restoring absent or malformed anatomy artificially. Anaplastology, along with modern plastic surgery, was greatly shaped by World War I. It was during World War I that modern weapons and lack of protection for faces and skulls created a drastic increase in soldiers affected by facial disfigurement.

Awards and Accomplishments Triton Babies in Boston Public GardenFrom 1907 to 1915, Ladd was the sole sculptor featured in multiple exhibitions, including exhibitions at The Gorham Gallery in New York (1913), the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her services earned her the Légion d'Honneur Croix de Chevalier and the Serbian Order of Saint Sava. Her sculpture Triton Babies is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.