Background
Grafly was born in 1862 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of German, Dutch and Quaker heritage and developed an interest in art at an early age.
Grafly was born in 1862 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of German, Dutch and Quaker heritage and developed an interest in art at an early age.
Charles Allan Grafly was a pupil of the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and of Henri M. Chapu and Jean Dampt, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. He received an Honorable Mention in the Paris Salon of 1891 for his "Mauvais Presage, " now at the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts, a gold medal at the Paris Exposition, in 1900, and medals at Chicago, 1893, Atlanta, 1895, and Philadelphia (the gold Medal of Honor, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), 1899.
In 1892 Charles Allan Grafly became Instructor in Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, also filling the same chair at the Drexel University, Philadelphia. He was a founding member of the National Sculpture Society and was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1905.
The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts has about twenty of Grafly's bronzes in its collection, while the museum at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas possesses over two hundred of his works, mostly plaster casts, from the late Charles and Dorothy Grafly Drummond (the artist's daughter). Among Grafly's many students were sculptors George Demetrios, Paul Manship, Louis Milione, Eugene Castello, Charles Harley, Nancy Coonsman, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Dudley Pratt, Walker Hancock, Albin Polasek, Katherine Lane Weems, and Albert Laessle.