Landscapes Drawn towards and away from the Sun

Thomas Kerrich, Diagram of Three Landscapes Drawn towards and away from the Sun, 1796

I just came upon a photograph I took of two remarkable drawings by Thomas Kerrich - I think they were in Patrick Keiller's 2012 exhibition, The Robinson Institute?  I last featured Kerrich here when I highlighted one of his views of the beach at Lowestoft, far more minimal than you would expect from a painting done in 1794.  These sketches come from around the same time: the cloud study is undated, but the three landscape views in circles were drawn around noon on March 18, 1796. Those three circular views could almost be conceptual art and remind me of photographs taken through Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels. The colour trials might be strange light effects somewhere beyond the stratosphere, although at first glance this image could be taken for fleeting impressions of pennants in a regatta and foam tipped waves.

Thomas Kerrich, Cloudscape with Colour Trials, c.1795 

The Tate has some other nice cloud studies by Kerrich - I have included one below.  The British Museum also has five of his sketches which 'record changes in the light and weather along a stretch of coastline near Lowestoft and Pakefield in Suffolk in August 1794.'  The curators suggest that 

'Their immediacy and freshness are due to the fact that they were done directly from nature, as indicated by the artist's notation; but also because as an amateur, Kerrich was not constrained by conventional landscape formulae and was free to explore weather and cloud effects with a simplicity and directness not equalled until the work of Constable nearly two decades later.'

Thomas Kerrich, Study of Two Clusters of Cumulus Clouds, c.1795