That is where Wilcox’s work leaves you with more questions than answers. For all the clarity of his paintings and posters, the man himself remains oddly elusive. There is surprisingly little personal material to go on. No memoir. Few anecdotes. No easy sense of how he lived when he wasn’t working. Did he own a boat? Did he enjoy sailing, or was the sea something he mostly observed from shore and dockside? What did he drive? A person’s car often tells you something about them, but even that detail seems to have slipped away.

Sorolla worked long hours carrying a small sketchbook everywhere, scrawling quick studies of landscapes, people or boats that he passed. Many of these sketches later became studies for major paintings. But even with his sketches at hand, he often chose to paint outdoors, believing that only by immersing himself in the environment could he truly capture its essence.

I am sailing from San Francisco to Sydney, writing a book called “The Sea—A Love Story”. (It’s a book for grown ups.) I made a cyanometer—actually four cyanometers—to measure the color of the sea each day while I’m on the ship. It’s very scientific.