Again Fulton succeeded, and in 1791 two of his portraits were exhibited at the Royal Academy, and the Royal Society of British Artists hung four paintings by him.
Then came the commission which changed the course of Fulton's life.
His work had attracted the notice of Viscount Courtenay, later Earl of Devon, and he was invited to Devonshire to paint that nobleman's portrait.

Here he met Francis, third Duke of Bridgewater, the father of the English canal system, and his hardly less famous engineer, James Brindley, and also Earl Stanhope, a restless, inquiring spirit.

Fulton the mechanic presently began to dominate Fulton the artist.

He studied canals, invented a means of sawing marble in the quarries, improved the wheel for spinning flax, invented a machine for making rope, and a method of raising canal boats by inclined planes instead of locks.

What money he made from these inventions we do not know, but somewhat later (1796) he speaks hopefully of an improvement in tanning.