Emily Nelligan , Untitled (Cranberry Island) , c. 1975, charcoal on paper, 13 x 9 7/8 inches


The gallery is pleased to announce the opening of  Emily Nelligan: Nocturne  at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine. The show includes over forty charcoal drawings made between the late 1950s and 2012 and remains on view through October 31. Emily Nelligan (1924 – 2018) first came to Maine in the 1950s along with a group of loosely affiliated artists who had all studied at Copper Union. Maine and eventually Great Cranberry Island became Nelligan’s sole muse – the only place where she worked, typically four months each year. In an earlier profile for the  New York Times , Deborah Weisgall wrote:   Some of her most beautiful drawings deal with the fading of that light, when color leaves the day. “I go until it gets dark,” Ms. Nelligan said. “Then I sleep.” She works in charcoal on writing paper and never seals her drawings with a fixative, as if that would stifle them. She draws favorite places along the shore: ledges, where an erased white halo of surf floods a rock abstracted to a black circle; a spit of land embracing an inlet’s still water, its bands of whites and grays.  
Emily Nelligan, View of Thrumcap , 1982, charcoal on paper, 7 ¼ x 10 ½ inches

These deeply emotive drawings, with their graduated lights and darks, tell of Nelligan’s intimate relationship and connection with a beloved setting and the motifs she returned to year after year. The drawings, often mystical in nature, reflect an enduring devotion to a chosen subject, Great Cranberry Island, and its infinite variability and universality. — Alexandre Gallery
Emily Nelligan , 4 AUG 07 , 2007, charcoal on paper, 7 ¼ x 10 ½ inches
 
Part representational, part abstract, Nelligan’s process of manipulating materials and methods accentuates the visual depths of the environment and the recesses of the imagination.  —Ogunquit Museum
Emily Nelligan, Winter/Spring 2002 (1), 2002, charcoal on paper, 7 ¼ x 10 ½ inches

Using only charcoal and eraser on ordinary letter paper, Ms. Nelligan has produced an extraordinary account of the islands, distilling coastlines, rocks, trees, sea, skies and weather into almost abstraction, while restricting her palette to the blacks, grays and whites that seem perfectly keyed to Cranberry’s reticent Maine character.  —Grace Glueck
American Art is always on view by appointment – and now digitally by request.
 
The gallery continues to actively deal in the paintings and sculpture of first-generation American Modernists and the Stieglitz Group. Please contact the gallery at  inquiries@alexandregallery.com
Alexandre Gallery Viewing Room at 724 Fifth Avenue

The gallery is now open by advance appointment for private viewings through Labor Day. We will present a group exhibition of new work by gallery artists when we re-open to the public on September 8 th . Please contact us at  inquiries@alexandregallery.com  if you would like to visit before September 8 th . COVID safety measures are in place. We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Alexandre Gallery | 212-755-2828 | www.alexandregallery.com
The gallery is open by advance appointment only during COVID-19 restrictions in New York.