Pear Blossom

Pear Blossom depicts the early-spring flowering of Pyrus communis, whose white five-petalled blooms with their prominent dark anthers open before the leaves and slightly earlier than apple blossom in the orchard sequence. Etched line carries the print without aquatint or carborundum tone, suiting the comparative simplicity of the pear flower against the more complex form of the fruit it precedes. The blossom is held in tight clusters at the spur tip, and the etched line delineates both the radial petal arrangement and the dark stamen punctuation that distinguishes pear from apple at flowering. As a companion to Apple Blossom within Doyle's orchard-blossom sequence, the print treats pear as part of a recorded annual cycle — flowering plates paired against the fruit plates such as Louise Bonne, Conference, and Doyenne du Comice that follow later in the year.