We called in at the birthplace of Gilbert Stuart, the local artist who made good in London.   Born in North Saunderstown, he moved to Newport aged seven.   His father operated a small rural snuff mill.   Aged 14, he was taught to paint by Cosmo Alexander, a travelling Scot, who took him away to Philadelphia, Virginia and ultimately to Edinburgh, where Alexander died.   Stuart then worked his way back to Newport as a crewman on a collier.   In Newport, he made a living painting rather wooden portraits of local grandees, but he left for London in 1775, when trouble was brewing in the colonies.   He worked to begin with as a church organist until he appealed to Benjamin West to take him on as a pupil.   In 1782, he made his reputation by exhibiting a portrait of a Scotsman, William Grant, skating (now known as The Skater and in the NGA Washington) in the RA’s annual exhibition.   He claimed to have been ‘lifted into fame by a single picture’.   Two years later, he greatly annoyed Reynolds by painting an unidealised portrait of him looking old, a bit bleary eyed and taking snuff.   Later on, when back in the United States as a successful portrait painter, he told Washington Allston that ‘Reynolds was a good painter, but he has done incalculable mischief to the rising generation by many of his remarks…You can elevate your mind as much as you can;  but, while you have nature before you as a model, paint what you see and look with your own eyes’.