Masson said the museum alarm and police sirens “forced the burglars to hurry, stealing only four works from the Renoir Museum”.
He added that, of those four, two were “left behind in the gardens of the Renoir museum”.
They made off with Portrait Of Madame Colonna Romano and the depiction of a woman at a well called Jeune Femme Au Puits.
Recovered from the museum grounds were the paintings Madame Pichon and Coco Lisant, a portrait of Renoir’s son Claude reading.
Renoir’s portrait of his son reading, Coco Lisant, was stolen by the thieves but later abandoned in the grounds of the museum.
A representative of a top French police union suggested that reconnaissance work was carried out beforehand.
Lilie Jalabert of the Alliance Police Nationale said: “These were certainly not first-time offenders. They were people with some experience who had, at the very least, scoped out the premises before carrying out this crime.”
The Renoir Museum lies half an hour’s drive from the southern city of Nice, in Renoir’s last home before he died aged 78 in 1919.
Its collection comprises nine paintings by Renoir, according to the museum.
It also includes several sculptures by him, as well as objects and furniture that belonged to the painter, such as his easel and wheelchair.
Some of his more famous works are on display at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, as well as in London and New York.
A spate of heists at French museums, including at the Louvre, has highlighted inadequate security in some cases and led to questions about whether criminal gangs see them as soft targets.
The four suspected Louvre robbers have been arrested, but the jewels they are accused of grabbing in the seven-minute heist have still not been found.
– AFP