Henry G. Hutchins

Henry G. Hutchins was the second witness called by the plaintiff in the 1883 libel trial of Gaston Feuardent against Luigi Palma di Cesnola, and his evidence concerned how the Cesnola statues had been put together after they reached New York. He testified as a former Assistant Superintendent of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and said he held that post in 1873, when the first instalment of the collection arrived badly broken, partly boxed and partly on the floor¹. In 1874 Isaac H. Hall thanked "Mr. H. G. Hutchins, curator" in his paper on the Cypriote inscriptions of the collection².

Hutchins testified that the repairer Feodor Gehlen, employed by the Museum Association, worked in the basement of the Fourteenth Street building under Cesnola's direction. He described the pieces one by one: a priest with a patera whose forearm and hand Gehlen supplied, a figure with a cow's head, a "bearded Venus" and a tailless dove that was given a wooden-and-plaster tail, a sarcophagus whose cracked side was filled with plaster, and a Hercules whose leg was built from sawn fragments on an iron rod. He said this was done before Cesnola went to Cyprus¹. Five letters from Cesnola in Cyprus to Hutchins, containing directions about glue and cement for the restorer, were put in evidence¹.

Feuardent had been introduced to him in 1877, and at Cesnola's request Hutchins showed him statuette no. 157. When cross-examined by Cesnola's counsel on the third day, he said the statuette shown in court did not look like the one he had shown Feuardent: the surface was smoother and the drapery lines were more distinct. He also identified the museum's album of photographs by Pach, which he said he had kept until he left the museum, and from which a leaf was missing¹. The date of his departure is not recorded.