Instructor of Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for 37 years, his students included Paul Manship, Albin Polasek, and Walker Hancock.

[2]: 118  He spent four years carving ornament and figures for Philadelphia City Hall, under the direction of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder.

[2]: 118 Grafly moved to Paris in 1888, where he studied for a year at the Académie Julian—drawing under Tony Robert-Fleury, painting under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and sculpture under Henri Chapu.

[2]: 119  He shared a flat with fellow American art students Robert Henri, Harry Finney, William Hoefeker, and James Randolph Fisher.

[1] The death of his father brought Grafly back to Philadelphia in early 1892,[2]: 119  and he began teaching at the Drexel Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

[1] The plaster was also part of Grafly's exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, but he abandoned it there rather than paying the freight fees to ship it back to Philadelphia.

[7]: 171 Grafly was commissioned in 1898 to create two colossal busts for the Smith Memorial Arch, a Civil War monument in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia.

[9]Grafly served as a member of the Art Jury for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri,[10] and designed the medal that was awarded to winning artists.

[11][12] Following sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward's withdrawal, Grafly created a heroic-size seated figure of Thomas Jefferson for the Cascade Garden.

[16] Grafly's plaster sketches are preserved at Wichita State University's Ulrich Museum of Art, and an early iteration of the work bordered on comical—a stalwart mother balancing screaming twin infants, one on each arm.

[16] The Pioneer Mother monument, by Charles Grafly, is a permanent bronze, a tribute by the people of the West to the women who laid the foundation of their welfare.

It is a true addition to noteworthy American works of art and fully expresses the spirit of this courageous motherhood, tender but strong, adventurous but womanly, enduring but not humble.

The strong hands, the firmly set feet, the clear, broad brow of the Mother and the uncompromisingly simple, sculpturally pure lines of figure and garments are honest and commanding in beauty.

Oxen skulls, pine cones, leaves and cacti decorate the base; the panels show the old sailing vessel, the Golden Gate, and the transcontinental trails.

[18]Relocation of the monument to San Francisco's Civic Center never happened, and the sculpture was rediscovered during the Great Depression, weather-beaten and vandalized, amidst the ruins of the 1915 world's fair.

[15]: 370  Critic Helen W. Henderson wrote: The bust of Henry Lorenz Viereck, entomologist, is the unique work of Charles Grafly in Washington.

His allegorical figure of England (1903–07) depicts a young Queen Victoria dressed in armor, holding the wand of Hermes and accompanied by the shield of St. George and a ship's wheel.

[33] His allegorical figure of France (1904–07) depicts a goddess crowned with a laurel wreath, holding a sceptre, a sheaf of wheat and a bronze statuette representing the Fine Arts, and accompanied by a Gallic rooster and a herm of the ancient god Dusios.

On January 21, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed a joint resolution of Congress creating the federal commission for the Meade Memorial.

"Loyalty also raises aloft over Meade's head a standard [ Legion eagle ] of wreaths and garlands, in commemoration of great achievement.

[37] The Meade Memorial was dismantled in 1969, to make way for excavation of the 3rd Street Tunnel under the National Mall and construction of the Capitol Reflecting Pool.

[37] Following fourteen years in storage, the memorial underwent restoration, and was installed on the entrance plaza of the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in 1983, one block northwest of its original site.

[41] Grafly's concept was to depict him in the prime of his manhood—as a burly, bare-chested Roman general, flanked by tigers and straddling a chariot-like cannon.

Grafly invited his former student Albert Laessle to model the tigers, and worked on the project, 1921–26, before setting it aside to complete the Meade Memorial.

In April 1929, on the day Hancock returned to Philadelphia from the American Academy in Rome, he heard the news—Grafly had been struck by a hit-and-run driver the night before.

In the period of his hospitalization and suffering, Grafly told Mr. [John Andrew] Myers [Director of PAFA] that he wanted me to take his place as instructor of sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy.

Among his students were sculptors Eugene Castello, Nancy Coonsman, George Demetrios, Hazel Brill Jackson,[51][52] Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Walker Hancock, Charles Harley, Albert Laessle, Paul Manship, Eleanor Mary Mellon,[53] Louis Milione, Albin Polasek, Dudley Pratt, Lawrence Tenney Stevens, and Katherine Lane Weems.

The Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University possesses more than two hundred of his works, mostly plaster casts, a bequest of Dorothy Grafly Drummond (the artist's daughter).