Born in Giverny, France where her father Edmund Greacen was an impressionist painter actively following Claude Monet, Nan Greacen became a noted oil painter and watercolorist. She began earning awards from 1936, when she received the Hallgarten Prize at the National Academy of Design. In the following years, her award medals were from the National Arts Club, Montclair Art Museum, Katherine Lorillard Wolfe, Hudson Valley Art Association, and Grumbacher Society.
She graduated from the Brearley School in New York City and then studied for four years at the Grand Central Art School, which her father had established in 1921. Her instructors were Wayman Adams, Arshile Gorky, Jerry Farnsworth and her father. She taught drawing and still life at the school from 1931 to 1942. She moved to Scarsdale, New York in 1945 with her husband, Rene Bard Faure, and two children, Nancy and Renee. Here she continued her successful painting and teaching career until 1969 when she and her husband retired to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
It was during this time in Ponte Vedra that she wrote and illustrated two books on painting technique: Still Life is Exciting [1965] and The Magic of Flower Painting [1971] and published with Walter Foster.
She continued to paint and teach until her death on November 15, 1999 at Vicars Landing, Florida.
Her one-woman exhibitions include Grand Central Art Gallery, 1967; Daytona Beach Art Gallery, 1969; and Florida Gulf Coast Art Center, 1972-1974.
She was a member of The National Academy of Design (ANA/1940; NA/1962), Audubon Artists, Allied Artists of America, Hudson Valley Art Association, Florida Water Color Society and Jacksonville Water Color Society.
Source:
Paul Sternberg Sr., Art by American Women; Renee Faure, daughter of the artist.
http://www.trottergalleries.com/artistbio.asp?at=NanGreacenNA&InvNo=1178
