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Thieves stole four paintings from the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, the local mayor said, but dropped two of them in the gardens \u200bas police, alerted by alarms, gave chase \u200bearly Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The most valuable works of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir have fetched dozens of millions of dollars at auctions.<\/p>\n
Mayor \u200bBryan Masson said the thieves broke \u2060into the museum a little \u200cbefore 6 a.m. through a hole made in a garden fence to snatch four paintings \u2014 the latest of a series of brazen art thefts in the country.<\/p>\n
“Attacking the\u00a0Renoir\u00a0Museum\u00a0is attacking a part of the history and heritage of Cagnes-sur-Mer. These actions are particularly serious,” Masson said.<\/p>\n
The \u200ctwo stolen paintings were Madame Colonna Romano and Young Woman at the Well, the municipality said. Both belong to Paris’s famous Orsay Museum and were on loan to Cagnes-sur-Mer’s Renoir Museum.<\/p>\n
“It’s Renoir’s, it is priceless, you \u2060cannot sell it like that,” the mayor told reporters, speaking in front of the museum.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0museum\u00a0was created in 1960 in the mansion of the artist\u00a0on a hill in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, where Renoir died in 1919. The collection on display in the\u00a0museum\u00a0includes 13 paintings from the master and some 40 sculptures, furniture and photographs.<\/p>\n
Theft follows 2025 Louvre heist<\/p>\n
Art thieves in Europe\u00a0are committing more violent robberies,\u00a0and specialist gangs have been replaced by ad hoc \u200bopportunists recruited through social media, pan-European police body Europol said last month.<\/p>\n