Laura Darling Stroud Ladd (American, 1863-1943)

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1863, Laura Stroud Ladd was a landscape and floral painter who settled briefly in Arizona but lived primarily in Philadelphia. Ladd formally trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She was married to architect Westray Ladd, who died in 1909. During her brief settling in Arizona in the 1920s, she exhibited at the 1926 Arizona State Fair, and according to the American Magazine of Art 1927, she won a prize for a painting judged “the best by a Philadelphia woman.”
Most of her career, she was active in Philadelphia where she was a member of the New York Water Color Club as well as the National Association of Women Painters. Exhibitions included the Pennsylvania Academy, 1888-1897; New York Water Color Club, 1898; Boston Art Club, 1900; and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1896, 1912 and 1922. Her last name appeared both as Stroud and Ladd in these exhibitions. Ladd died in 1943 in Philadelphia.