To many, John Banister (1744–1831) was an irascible, autocratic, self-admiring, stiff fellow, whose involvement in real estate and international trade earned him possibly the largest fortune in Newport. Stuart's father, a tenant on Banister's Wharf, presumably made the introductions soon after Stuart returned from Scotland in 1773. The conspicuous linearity in the portraits of Banister and his wife and son was not a trait of American primitivism, as some have thought, but rather a hallmark of contemporary Scottish portraiture.