Meteyard was a leading member of the Birmingham Group, the circle of artists who flourished in Birmingham under the influence of Burne-Jones and William Morris. Like many of the others, he studied under E.R.Taylor at the Birmingham School of Art, and subsequently joined the staff. He may well have encountered Burne-Jones personally when the artist, a native of Birmingham, paid one of his visits to the School, and certainly Burne-Jones influenced his work profoundly. He contributed to the murals in Birmingham Town Hall painted by members of the Group about 1890, as well as to two of their joint schemes of illustration, A Book of Pictured Carols (1893) and The Quest
(1894-6). As a teacher he was responsible for enamelling, gesso, leatherwork and other crafts. He exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy (1900-18), the New Gallery, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (of which he was Secretary) and the Paris Salon. He was also a prolific designer of stained glass, carried out altarpieces in churches at Bordesley (1916) and Southport (1921), illuminated rolls of honour, and executed enamel plaques, often in collaboration with his wife and former pupil, Kate Eadie. Unlike many members of the Birmingham Group, he never moved away from the area, continuing to teach at the Art School until 1933 and dying at Alcester on Good Friday 1947.

Mr Stephen Wildman has idenfified Harvey & Ashley, a name which occurs on one of these studies, as a firm of stained-glass makers active in 1913 and probably after the First World War. For further details of Meteyard's career, see Alan Crawford (ed.), By Hammer and Hand. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham, 1984, which includes a chapter on the circle's stained glass