[1] In addition to his work as an artist, Greacen also founded, ran and taught in New York City's Grand Central School of Art for more than 20 years.
[3] Thanks to the father's success in business affairs, the family was able to maintain a home at 6 West 50th Street—the site is now occupied by the Rockefeller Center[4] — and in Delaware County in upstate New York, where the couple and their four children spent their summers.
Greacen earned a bachelor's degree from New York University and afterward was sent on a "shoe-selling world cruise" by his father, who wanted him distracted from a fascination with the Spanish–American War.
In 1905 Greacen and his wife traveled to Spain with the Chase class, and then the couple went on to study in the Netherlands, Belgium, and England.
A son, Edmund William Jr, was born in Paris in 1906, and by the summer of 1907 the family had rented a house in Giverny, France, near the home of Claude Monet.
The same year, Greacen joined with John Singer Sargent and Walter Leighton Clark to establish the Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative.