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These paintings are my earliest works

or

These paintings are my earlier works

Which one of this sentence is correct if I want to say that the paintings are the ones I paint at the beginning of my carrier?

I've done some Ngram search, it said that 'earlier' is more commonly used, but I feel like 'earliest' sounds more natural.

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"Earliest" means the most early, hence would refer to the first of your paintings.
"Earlier" means the early ones, without a specific timestamp, so it would refer to any of your previous paintings.

Hence, earliest would describe those paintings perfectly, without any doubt of the time-of-their-making in the audience's mind.

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    I would add that "earlier" would probably not refer to a painting you completed a month ago if your painting career is longer than, say, 5 years. Using "earlier works" implies that there is a cut off and that you have a cohort of "later works" or "recent works" that do not solely include the painting you are working on
    – katatahito
    Commented Jun 17, 2019 at 6:18

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