Attributed to Nicolaes Maes (Dutch, 1634-1693)

Portrait of a Lady in a Gold Necklace and Pendant Earrings
oil on canvas
42 3/4 x 33 3/4 inches (sight).

Property from the Estate of John L. Bates, Fort Belvoir, Virginia

Provenance:

Serge Baskakow, Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Acquired from the above in 1946;

thence by family descent to the present owner

John L. Bates (1910-1995), born in St. Petersburg as Oleg O. Pantuhov, was a U.S. Army major who served as the chief military attaché and interpreter for President Roosevelt in his meetings with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at both the Teheran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945. He similarly served as the primary interpreter for the Potsdam Conference in 1945 between President Truman, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Joseph Stalin following Roosevelt’s death. Bates went on to serve as General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Russian interpreter and assisted in the formation of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), a precursor to NATO of which Eisenhower was commander.

Bates’s father served as a colonel in the Russian Imperial Guard at the Kremlin when his family was forced to flee in 1920 after the fall of the House of Romanov and the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. The family ultimately settled in New York City, and Bates joined the Army as a young man, where his fluency in Russian made him a highly sought-after recruit. Bates was ultimately awarded the Legion of Merit for his distinguished military career, and remained an active member of the Russian-American community until his death.