Painter and printmaker Jacob Meyer was born Kristian Jacob Valdemar Meyer in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 11, 1895, the son of painter Carl Vilhelm Meyer and Marie Sophie Albertine Madsen. He enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen in 1913, graduating in spring of 1915, and he took his first of many study trips to Italy in 1921. In 1923, he debuted at Charlottenburg Palace, where he would continue to exhibit through the late 1960s. In addition to his personal artistic output, he worked as a ceramics painter for Bregnerod Pottery. Further travel would take him to Paris, Rotterdam, and Budpest, and in 1941 he received the Otto Bache scholarship. Mayer died on August 26, 1971, in Denmark.