Pomegranate Tree

Pomegranate Tree extends Doyle's sustained interest in fruiting trees beyond the orchards of Ireland to a Mediterranean species, Punica granatum, recognisable by its narrow glossy leaves, scarlet trumpet flowers and globular hip-like fruit crowned by a persistent calyx. The etching likely sets a single tree or a fruiting branch on a plain ground, in line with her habit of isolating each subject so that structural drawing carries the image. Etched line is well adapted to the sinewy, twisting habit of pomegranate wood and the precise geometry of the calyx; tonal passages across the fruit can be developed in aquatint or carborundum. Tagged within her Trees grouping, the print joins her studies of olive, apple, and other cultivated species, suggesting a broader project in which the artist documents the plants of European horticulture as portrait subjects. The pomegranate also carries a long iconographic afterlife — Persephone, fertility, resurrection — though Doyle's treatment is observational rather than allegorical, the symbolism left implicit in the choice of subject.