Seventeen Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) will be auctioned early next year. The Art Newspaper reports that the seventeenth-century paintings will be sold through Christie’s across two live auctions in New York on 5 February 2025 to raise money for the museum’s acquisition fund.

Several years ago, the MFA’s curatorial team began reviewing the museum collection. Frederick Ilchman, chair of the museum’s Art of Europe department, said in a statement that the recent review of the museum’s Netherlandish holdings came in direct response to a combined gift of 113 works by Dutch and Flemish artists from Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie in 2017. “We carefully reviewed the entire collection,” said Ilchman, who added that the 2017 gift “nearly doubled” the museum’s holdings of Dutch and Flemish paintings. “We realized that some paintings were duplicative, and we had a better painting or a more useful painting by the same artist.”

The sale of the works is in accordance with the deaccessioning guidelines set by the Associated of Art Museum Directors in 2022. Among the highlights of the works selected for auction are paintings by Jan Both, Jan van Goyen, Pieter Claesz. and Emanuel de Witte (all pictured below).