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Gilbert Stuart was an American who had crossed to London to learn painting under Benjamin West, and in 1782 he was still unknown, working through the years of the war that would make his home country independent. A young Scotsman, William Grant, came to sit for a portrait and remarked that the day was too bitterly cold for sitting, better for skating. So the two of them went out onto the frozen Serpentine in Hyde Park, where Grant's gliding drew an admiring crowd. Stuart turned the sitting itself into the picture, showing Grant calm and upright, arms folded, in mid-glide across the ice. Nothing like a full-length portrait of a man skating had been seen at the Royal Academy, and it lifted Stuart at once into the company of Reynolds and Gainsborough. He said later that a single picture had suddenly made him famous.