“The packet Louis Philippe has brought me a letter from Mr. Thomson enclosing two bills of lading and Invoice of Paintings, etc., he says he will sell his farm if he can get for it $100,000. So I think with you that the same will not be sold. Mr. Sagony tells me he has received a Power of Attorney to sell to Mr. Suffern if he will give $90,000. I have not seen Mr. S since but know he will not pay more than half that sum. The Paintings I will, if practicable, pack and send by next Saturdays boat. Please send me the Nov. rents…Mr. Roosevelt is drawing a paper to be executed by Mr. Pitcairn [ probably former diplomat and New York landowner Joseph Pitcairn] and myself to abide by the decision of the Referees if they decide as I think they ought…”

The “Mr. Thomson” named in this letter was John Thomson, Jr., a New York “gentleman” (i.e., a rich man, probably sans occupation) who was married to the daughter of Henry Walter Livingston, the upper-crust New York lawyer, once law clerk to Alexander Hamilton. Thomson owned a large estate called Ellerslie in Duchess County, north of New York City. Possibly because his brother-in-law had married into the French nobility, Thomson and his wife decided, in 1835, to expatriate permanently to Florence, Italy, engaging real estate agent William B. Platt, and attorney Charles Sagony, to sell his New York property for him. Stephen Hutchings partnered in handling the transaction, foreshadowed in this letter, that would put the Thomson property into the hands of rich New York City merchant William Kelly (who, on the eve of the Civil War, would run unsuccessfully as Democratic candidate for Governor of New York). Kelly later sold Ellerslie to Levi Morton, Republican Governor of New York, and Vice President of the United States. As for Platt, he was still active in the real estate business when banker James Roosevelt – possibly the “Mr. Roosevelt” named in this letter – purchased the large Hyde Park estate that was to become the beloved home of his son, future President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It’s not unlikely that Platt also had a hand in that transaction, as he was still selling real estate in 1867 and was an executive of the Bank of Hyde Park.

        But even more interesting than the substance of this letter is the identity of the writer.

The New York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America lists Stephen B. Hutchings as a “Portrait painter working in NYC from 1811 to 1846. Dunlap states” – incorrectly – “that he started painting in 1802 but that he was distracted by other pursuits”.  This letter testifies to his “other pursuits” – he was a well-connected real estate agent in New York City. There are numerous advertisements in New York City newspapers in the late 1830s mentioning Hutchings’ real estate activities, but only one (in the New York Evening Post of November 1826) offering "to the Gentleman of the Bar" his services in "copying and engrossing".  He was listed as a “portrait painter” in the New York City Directory from 1812 until 1843, when he was instead identified as a “(real) estate agent”, by which point he had also been appointed a New York City Commissioner of Deeds.  His great grandson left a record of his ancestor as a “miniature portrait painter” and “copyist”, born in the Bowery in New York City in 1795, and living in Manhattan “for most of his life” until his death in Bloomfield, New Jersey in 1885 at the age of 90.  He also dated the beginning of Hutchings’ artistic career as 1812, when Hutchings was just 17. Twelve years after that, in 1834, an exhibition by the National Academy of Design in New York City, included a Hutchings “portrait of a gentleman”.  The American Monthly magazine remarked that like “most of the portraits in this, and indeed al other exhibitions of the city”, Hutchings’s work was “cold, stiff and devoid of any merit except that of similarity, a merit which can only be appreciated by friends of the subject.” Nonetheless, the work was good enough to be hung on the same wall as a painting by Samuel F.B. Morse, still trying his hand as an artist just a few years before his earth-shaking invention of the telegraph.

However, the New York Historical Society had good reason of its own to know that Hutchings was a competent portrait painter. In 1768, clergyman Myles Cooper, President of what later became Columbia College journeyed to Boston to have his portrait painted by the famous John Singleton Copley.  In 1817, Nicholas William Stuyvesant gave Copley’s painting to the Society, which passed it on to Columbia College in 1820 on the condition that the College pay for a copy of the portrait to be retained by the Society. (The Columbia original has since been given to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington). So, the Society commissioned Hutchings to make a copy of the painting for its own collection. But somewhat mysteriously, in 1910, the Columbia University Quarterly noted that there were two identical Copley/Cooper portraits hanging in different rooms at the University, adding that "whether the picture in the superintendent’s office is a replica by Copley, or a copy by some other painter, has not been determined." The article went on to note that there was "still another" copy in the New York Historical Society collection, but neglected to credit Hutchings as the artist. So did Hutchings produce two copies of the same portrait? What other paintings did he produce before he began selling farms in rural New York state? And, most intriguingly, what were the “paintings” mentioned in the letter as having been sent by Thomson on a boat from Paris? Were any of these elegant copies by Hutchings that Thomson might have acquired before leaving America?

These are questions that cannot be answered from historical records.  The Library of Congress’ Archive Grid lists no letters written by an S.B. Hutchings, Stephen B. Hutchings, or Stephen Brown Hutchings. This may be a sole surviving holograph of a very talented realtor.