Two Renoir paintings recovered after France museum heist, mayor says

Two paintings by the French Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir that were stolen from a museum in southern France a month ago have been recovered, the town’s mayor said.

“These two paintings are not simply works of art. They are part of our city’s history,” Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, said on Friday. “Knowing they have been recovered is an immense relief.”

Six people have been arrested in connection with the theft, local authorities said. Masson did not say where the paintings were found or in what condition.

How the theft unfolded

Two thieves broke into the Renoir Museum a little before 6am on September 8, cutting through a fence to enter the grounds, smashing a window and using an electric saw to cut the clips securing the frames, Masson said at the time.

He described them as “well equipped” and “well informed”.

The museum alarm sounded at 5:48am, and municipal police arrived five minutes later, forcing the thieves to flee.

They had taken four paintings, valued by the mayor at about nine million euros ($10.5m).

Two of the stolen works – Renoir’s “Portrait of Madame Pichon” and “Coco Reading” – were later found dropped in the museum garden, the prosecutor’s office said at the time.

The two works that remained missing were “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano” and “Young Woman at the Well”, the office said.

Police said last month that the thieves were not first-time offenders and had scoped out the premises.

The Marseille prosecutor opened a theft investigation into an organised gang, and the national office for trafficking in cultural goods joined the probe.

A string of museum heists

The museum, opened in 1960, is in the painter’s last home, where he died in 1919.

“This incident should serve as a warning about the protection of our museums,” Masson said after the robbery.

The theft came less than a year after jewels worth about $100m were stolen from the Louvre in Paris in a daylight robbery.

The four suspected robbers have been arrested, but the jewels have not been found.

In August, Italian police said they had recovered paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth more than $10.4m that were stolen from a museum in March.