Fanad Head

An etching of Fanad Head, the headland on the eastern shore of the entrance to Lough Swilly in County Donegal, where the white tower and keeper's compound have stood above the cliffs since 1817. The composition presumably gathers the lighthouse, ancillary buildings, and boundary wall onto their narrow rocky platform, with the open North Atlantic beyond. Worked in line etching, the print depends on the registered drawing of the tower's circular plan, gallery, and lantern housing — the kind of disciplined architectural notation Early carries from her formation as a registered architect in Ireland into her intaglio practice at Graphic Studio Dublin. Hatched and cross-hatched passages do the work of tonal modeling that an aquatint plate would otherwise carry, leaving the white of the paper to stand for the lighthouse itself. Fanad Head joins Early's continuing series of Irish and North Atlantic lighthouse subjects, alongside Baily, Hook Head, Loop Head, and the New England towers at Bass Harbor, The Nubble, and Portland Headlight.