[1] Her parents were Esther Müller and the bailiff Johann Rudolf Waser, an educated man who promoted the talent of his daughter.

When she could not learn anything on her first teacher Johannes Sulzer, she went at fourteen to Bern to study with Joseph Werner, one of the leading Swiss painter.

In 1699, Anna Waser now 21 years old, was appointed by the art-loving Count Wilhelm Moritz von Solms-Braunfels as court painter to his Schloss Braunfels [de] an der Lahn in Hessen.

Instead of a planned trip to Paris, she was asked back to Zurich, because the mother was ill and her brother Johann Rudolf, a tutor in Braunfels, decided to travel as a military chaplain to Holland.

[citation needed] In 1708, she was together with her sisters Anna and Maria Elisabeth Waser continued some drawings.