Museum director and curator; Charles Rufus Morey student

Modernist art historian and reformer of art history. Meier-Graefe was the son of, Edward Meier, a civil engineer for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Marie Graefe, (d. 1867) who died giving birth to him. The family moved to the Rhineland area of Germany; Meier-Graefe grew up near Düsseldorf, gaining his Abitur in 1879. As an adult, he added his mother's name to his in her memory. He married Clotilde Vitzthum von Eckstädt, related to the future art historian Georg Vitzthum von Eckstädt.