Wingate dentist donates 7 Rembrandt etchings to Wingate University

Donating art from a dentist’s office is not usually cause for celebration.

But thanks to Dr. Lee Bates and his wife, Dawn, Wingate University now owns seven Rembrandt etchings and a piece by pop artist Peter Max. Bates recently retired from his practice across from the Union County university.

“What a marvelous contribution Dr. Bates and his wife have made,” university spokesman Jeff Atkinson said Friday. “I’ve never seen a real Rembrandt, and now we’ll have seven.”

The Rembrandts were valued at $31,700, Atkinson said, and the Max is worth about $4,000.

Copper plates that were used to produce the etchings were created and signed by Rembrandt, university gallery director Charlene Bregier said. The etchings themselves were part of the “Millennium Impressions” made by an expert for a Michigan gallery using the Rembrandt plates between 1998 and 2008, she said.

The couple donated the art over the summer, and the university announced the move late Thursday. The pieces will be on display starting Tuesday in the Helms Gallery at The Batte Center.

Cruising for art

Lee Bates wasn’t looking to acquire fine art when he and his family hopped on a cruise to Bermuda in 2005. But a gallery’s art exhibit and auction on board the ship enticed him to buy a photo of Muhammad Ali with the Beatles that Ali had signed. Then he “got caught up in the auction” and ended up buying the Rembrandts and other art as well.

About five years ago, he moved the pieces from his Marshville-area home and into his office, alongside art bought at a furniture store.

A grand total of three patients over the years asked whether the etchings were by Rembrandt, Bates said. “Very few people realized what they were,” he added.

Bates sold his 22-year-old practice in June and is semi-retired. The couple’s daughter had graduated from Wingate’s physician assistant program in late 2013, and the Bateses, who were moving to Jonas Ridge in Burke County, thought it would be a good idea to donate the art to the museum.

Bates kept the Ali-Beatles photo, however.

‘Height of the collection’

Rembrandt is one of the titans of the art world. The 17th-century Dutch painter is known for his prolific paintings and etchings during the Dutch Golden Age. He died in 1669.

The etchings acquired by the university are “Self Portrait at a Window,” “Bust of a Man Wearing a High Cap,” “The Golf Player,” “The Card Player,” “Artist’s Mother with Hand on Her Chest,” “Christ and the Woman of Samaria” and “Landscape with a Cow.”

Max, a German-born American artist, is known for his psychedelic colors in various mediums. The university has his 2001 acrylic on lithograph called “God Bless America II.”

The university is building another art gallery, the $1.2 million Hinson Art Gallery. The 5,500-square-foot gallery ultimately will house the Bateses’ artwork as well as other pieces in the university’s collection that have been in storage, according to Atkinson.

The Bateses’ donation “is so important to us ... and will just be the height of the collection,” Bregier said.

She will lead a public presentation on the new collection on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the Batte Center’s McGee Theatre, followed by a reception.

This story was originally published January 23, 2015 at 8:13 AM with the headline "Wingate dentist donates 7 Rembrandt etchings to Wingate University."