[1] Artist Nicolai Fechin, a student of Ilya Repin, arrived in New York on August 1, 1923 with his wife Alexandra Nikolaevna and daughter Iya.

From 1910 until the outbreak of World War I, Fechin was a regular participant in international art exhibitions in Pittsburgh, which the Carnegie Institution organized annually.

Fechin expressed a wish to paint a portrait of Jack R. Hunter in gratitude for his help with moving artist's family to America and it was done.

On September 3, 2016 Elena Bukhtina was detained by customs officers at Pulkovo Airport while trying to illegally export Portrait of Jack R. Hunter to China.

According to V. Kraevsky, senior investigator for especially important cases of the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, "the very scheme of the crime was simple and banal.

At the end of April 2017 the Moscow District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced Bukhtina to three years' imprisonment with a probation period of three years on the basis of the investigation of the criminal case against E. Bukhtina (Part 1 art.226.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (illegal transfer of cultural property across the customs border of the Russian Federation, in relation to which special rules of displacement are established).

On the basis of the same Court decision, Portrait of Jack R. Hunter by Nikolai Feshin was declared state property.

[5][6] On October 24, 2017 the transfer ceremony of Portrait of Jack R. Hunter to the collections of the Russian Museum was held in the Mikhailovsky Palace in Saint Petersburg.