Edmund Greacen was born into a family whose considerable wealth came from a wholesale shoe business. He attended the Halsey School and New York University, from which he graduated in 1897. The next year his father sent him on a round-the-world trip to prevent him from volunteering for service in the Spanish-American War. Greacen produced numerous sketches while traveling and upon his return began studying at the Art Students League. He then studied at William Merritt Chase's School of Art and was with Chase at his summer school at Shinnecock on Long Island. He married Ethol Booth of New Haven in 1904, and the next summer the couple went to Spain with Chase's class. They remained in Europe, settling in Paris in 1906. In 1907 they moved to Giverny and, with Karl Anderson, Frederick Frieseke, and Richard Emil Miller, joined the colony of American artists there. Greacen's prevailing Impressionist style in the painting of landscapes, figures, and urban scenes dates from these years.
Greacen returned to New York in 1909 and participated in the Exhibition of Independent Artists of 1910. He spent a number of summers from 1910 to 1917 in Old Lyme, Connecticut, staying at Florence Griswold's boarding house. Solo exhibitions of his work were presented at Folsom Galleries, New York, in 1911, and the Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art in 1914. During the summer of 1916 he was in New Hope, Pennsylvania, with his artist-friends R. Sloan Bredin, Daniel Garber, and Edward Redfield. In 1917 he and Bredin started the Manhattan Art School, but the United States's entrance into World War I brought the venture to an early end; during 1918 Greacen served six months in France with the French YMCA.
In 1922 Greacen was the leading figure in the organization of the cooperative Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association. Its aim was to bring together artists, whose works could be perpetually on display, and patrons, who would contribute financial support. Walter L. Clark, a partner of J. P. Morgan, developed a program whereby the patrons were assured a work by one of the participating artists in return for their donations. More than ninety artists, the majority of whom were Academy members, pledged to contribute one painting each year for three years. The gallery opened in 1923 on the top floor of Grand Central Station; it later became the Grand Central Art Galleries. In 1924 Greacen founded the Grand Central School of Art, also at the top of the station, which became his major preoccupation until ill health forced him to give it up in 1944.
Greacen served on the Academy Council for the year 1936-37.
