Second professor of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1910-1933 and its first "modernist" (i.e., post-classicist). Mather was the son of Frank Jewett Mather, Sr. (1835-1929), a lawyer, and Caroline Arms Graves (Mather). After graduating in 1889 from Williams College, Williamstown, MA, Mather entered Johns Hopkins University where he completed his Ph.D. in 1892 in English philology and literature. That same year he traveled to Berlin to study art (specifically Italian painting) returning in 1893 to teach Anglo-Saxon and Romance languages at Williams.