{"id":626109,"date":"2026-10-10T05:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T05:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626109\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T05:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T05:28:11","slug":"two-renoir-paintings-recovered-after-france-museum-heist-mayor-says-arts-and-culture-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/626109\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Renoir paintings recovered after France museum heist, mayor says | Arts and Culture News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recovered Renoir paintings, valued at millions, were stolen in a daring heist at Cagnes-sur-Mer last month.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Published On 10 Oct 202610 Oct 2026<\/p>\n

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\u2019s mayor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese two paintings are not simply works of art. They are part of our city\u2019s history,\u201d Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, said on Friday. \u201cKnowing they have been recovered is an immense relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

How the theft unfolded<\/p>\n

Two thieves broke into the Renoir Museum<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

He described them as \u201cwell equipped\u201d and \u201cwell informed\u201d.<\/p>\n

The museum alarm sounded at 5:48am, and municipal police arrived five minutes later, forcing the thieves to flee.<\/p>\n

They had taken four paintings, valued by the mayor at about nine million euros ($10.5m).<\/p>\n

Two of the stolen works \u2013 Renoir\u2019s \u201cPortrait of Madame Pichon\u201d and \u201cCoco Reading\u201d \u2013 were later found dropped in the museum garden, the prosecutor\u2019s office said at the time.<\/p>\n

The two works that remained missing were \u201cPortrait of Madame Colonna Romano\u201d and \u201cYoung Woman at the Well\u201d, the office said.<\/p>\n

Police said last month that the thieves were not first-time offenders and had scoped out the premises.<\/p>\n

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

A string of museum heists<\/p>\n

The museum, opened in 1960, is in the painter\u2019s last home, where he died in 1919.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis incident should serve as a warning about the protection of our museums,\u201d Masson said after the robbery.<\/p>\n

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

The four suspected robbers have been arrested, but the jewels have not been found.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recovered Renoir paintings, valued at millions, were stolen in a daring heist at Cagnes-sur-Mer last month. Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,2567,499,500,6147,501,156,2024,1221,12898,111,43,139,69,675,814],"class_list":["post-626109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-crime","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-investigation","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-police","tag-property"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}