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.

Turner was obsessed with nature—especially storms, shipwrecks, light, and atmosphere. He is said to have lashed himself to the mast of a ship during a storm just to observe the sea’s fury firsthand (though that story is likely embellished, it certainly feels true). Whether sketching in the Alps, observing a sunrise over Venice, or chasing a storm across the English coast, Turner painted with a weather-watcher’s passion and precision.