Two Renoir paintings still missing after French Riviera museum heist

Two thieves broke into the Musée Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera early on Tuesday, stealing four paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir before abandoning two of them in the museum garden as they fled. The mayor, Bryan Masson, said the pair appeared to be "well equipped and well informed" about the museum, which occupies the artist's former home about 10 miles west of Nice.

The stolen works still missing are "Young Woman at the Well" and "Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano," both on loan from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, according to Masson. The two paintings recovered in the garden were identified as "Portrait of Madame Pichon" and "Coco Reading," a depiction of Renoir's young son Claude. The mayor's office estimated the value of the stolen works at €9 million.

Masson told local broadcaster Ici Azur that the thieves sliced through the museum garden fence with an electric knife or metal saw, entered through the ground floor, and cut the clips securing the artwork frames. The alarm sounded at 5:48 a.m., and police arrived about five minutes later, which the mayor said "forced the burglars to flee in haste and helped limit the scale of the theft." Investigators found two zip-up bags at the scene that may have belonged to the suspects.

The museum, established in 1960 in the mansion where Renoir died in 1919, houses about a dozen of his paintings and roughly 40 sculptures, along with personal items including his easel and wheelchair. It was closed on Tuesday while the investigation continued.

The heist is the latest in a series of high-profile art thefts across Europe. Last October, thieves stole crown jewels worth €88 million from the Louvre in Paris. Last month, four Renaissance paintings by Antonello da Messina were taken from a museum in Sicily. Italian police recently recovered paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse worth more than $10.4 million that had been stolen from a museum in March.

Masson called for greater security for museums across France. "This incident should serve as a warning about the protection of our museums, which now face a new form of organised crime targeting works of art," he said. James Ratcliffe of the Art Loss Register told the Associated Press that without further funding for museum security, the number of thefts is likely to increase. "Each time thefts occur, it draws yet more attention to the perception of these museums as relatively easy targets," he said.