Two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, stolen a month ago from the museum in the artist’s last home in southern France, have been recovered. Six people have been arrested. The four works taken in the raid were valued at about nine million euros.
Two paintings by the French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir that were stolen from a museum in southern France a month ago have been recovered, Al Jazeera reported, citing the town’s mayor.
“These two paintings are not simply works of art. They are part of our city’s history,” said Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, on Friday, October 9. “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 what condition they are in.
The Paintings
The two works that had remained missing were:
- “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano”
- “Young Woman at the Well”
Two others taken in the same raid, “Portrait of Madame Pichon” and “Coco Reading”, were found soon afterwards, dropped in the museum garden.
The mayor valued the four paintings at about nine million euros ($10.5 million).
How the Theft Happened
Two thieves broke into the Renoir Museum shortly before 6am on September 8. According to the mayor’s account at the time, they:
- cut through a fence to enter the grounds
- smashed a window
- used an electric saw to cut the clips holding the frames
The alarm sounded at 5:48am. Municipal police arrived five minutes later, forcing the thieves to flee.
Masson described them as “well equipped” and “well informed”. Police said they were not first-time offenders and had studied the premises in advance.
The Investigation
The Marseille prosecutor opened an investigation into theft by an organised gang. France’s national office for trafficking in cultural goods joined the inquiry.
The Museum
The museum opened in 1960 in the painter’s last home, where he died in 1919.
A Run of Museum Thefts
“This incident should serve as a warning about the protection of our museums,” Masson said after the robbery.
It came less than a year after jewels worth about $100 million were stolen from the Louvre in Paris in a daylight robbery. Four suspects have been arrested in that case, but the jewels have not been found.
In August, Italian police said they had recovered paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse, worth more than $10.4 million, that had been stolen from a museum in March.
Image: The Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France (file photo, 2016). Photo by Muesse via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
