Charles Frederick William Mielatz was born in Bredding, Germany. He emigrated to the United States with his family and studied at the Chicago School of Design, the National Academy of Design and with James J. Calahan in Newport, Rhode Island, where he learned etching. Though his initial prints were pastoral landscapes of New England, Mielatz turned instead to the depiction of workaday urban settings.

Not unlike Käthe Kollwitz, Mielatz typically reworked his etchings unsparingly in order to attain the fulfillment of his artistic intent, often resulting in numerous states of a given work. He was an early practitioner of multi-plate color etchings in the United States, and is presumed to have been influenced by the color print work of Mary Cassatt.

Mielatz was a member of the New York Etching Club, the Brooklyn Society of Etchers and was an associate member of the National Academy of Design. In 1906 he succeeded James David Smillie as the etching teacher at the National Academy, a position he held until his death in 1919. Echoes of his work can be seen in the prints of John Sloan and Martin Lewis, themselves champions of the urban environment. Mielatz died in New York City.