Born in New York City, painter and lithographer Paul Raphael Meltsner studied at the National Academy of Design and began his career as a magazine illustrator. With the onset of the Great Depression, Meltsner found employment with the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Adminstration and toured the United States, portraying industrial and agricultural workers in their everyday surroundings in paintings, prints, and murals.

His lithographs, in bold social realist style, won approval from everyday collectors as well as museums. His paintings found their way into numerous private collections and institutions including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine arts in Boston, The Whitney Museum, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and many others.

In his later years, Meltsner turned to celebrity portraits and retired from New York City to Woodstock, New York, where he died.