The collection and its layout are permanent, so empty frames remain hanging both in homage to the missing works and as placeholders for their return. Experts were puzzled by the choice of artwork, since more valuable works were left untouched. Other paintings and sketches by Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Govert Flinck were stolen, along with a relatively valueless eagle finial and Chinese gu. Also missing is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt's only seascape. Among them was The Concert, one of only 34 known paintings by Johannes Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting in the world. The stolen works were originally procured by art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) and intended for permanent display at the museum with the rest of her collection. The museum is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the art's recovery, the largest bounty ever offered by a private institution. The stolen works have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and art dealers. The case is unsolved no arrests have been made and no works have been recovered.
Guards admitted two men posing as police officers responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves tied the guards up and looted the museum over the next hour. In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The frame which once held Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633)