Born in Greencastle, Indiana, Griffit moved with his family, at age four, to the Dallas area where, as a youth, he studied with Frank Reaugh and accompanied him on one of his summer sketching caravans to West Texas. Griffith studied afterward as the St. Louis School for the Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Academy of Design, New York. After a period in France, England, New Orleans, Mexico, and a return to Texas, he worked as a commercial artist for the Barnes Crosby Engraving Company of Chicago and New York. In 1922 he settled in Nashville, Indiana, where he was afterward associated with the Brown Country art colony. He made occasional painting trips to Texas, as when he painted scenes of downtown Dallas (1926) and when he painted in the Big Bend area and exhibited with the San Antonio Art League (1928). Griffith died in Franklin, Indiana.