An artist, engineer and musician, Wilfred Knox bore witness to the last days of sail, the re-emerging dominance of British maritime merchant commerce and both world wars. While he worked with tools for the Royal Flying Corps during the big one, he went to his artistic profession for enjoyment. Painting primarily with watercolors and gouache, and often working under the pseudonym A.D. Bell, his subjects were mainly the grand clipper ships, with occasional depictions of Venetian landscapes and the World War I fighter planes he knew so well. A retrospective of his works was held in 1987.