When he was in Cuba covering the Spanish-American war he was most concerned about the lack of food. He refused to scrounge food from Army field kitchens, so he was often hungry. When the Battle of San Juan Hill began, others ran for cover and shouted, "Save yourself! We're under fire!"

"Beans!" was Glackens^' reply as he discovered a plate of abandoned food. He stopped eating only long enough to shout, "Cowards!"

Glackens became a freelance artist when he returned to New York. His drawings of action on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange were a contrast to the work of Charles Dana Gibson.

Although he was able to support his family as a commercial artist, Glackens' first love was painting. In 1912 he was given an opportunity to travel to Europe with $20,000 from his friend Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a former fellow semipro baseball player who had made a fortune by inventing a patent medicine called Argyrol. Glackens came back with paintings by artists such as Renoir, Degas, van Gogh and Cezanne.