One of them revealed that the missing paintings were hidden behind a wall made of concrete blocks and plasterboard in his house at Clermont-L\u2019H\u00e9rault near Marseille, the local prosecutor Nicolas Bessone explained in a press conference.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/dba9d91802c8b861b43d7f7c5b2c55bceb5d1232-1856x1240.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Renoir\u2019s Madame Colonna Romano\u00a0(1910) and\u00a0Jeune femme au puits (Young Woman at the Well, 1886) were both stolen and later recovered<\/p>\n
Mus\u00e9e Renoir<\/p>\n
The paintings, estimated at \u20ac4m and on loan from the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay, are in a \u201crather good condition\u201d, Bessone continued.<\/p>\n
The main suspect, aged 29, had been\u00a0quickly identified by traces of DNA found on the protective covering of one of the paintings left in the garden, said Eric Antonetti, the head of police in the southern region of the maritime Alps in the same press conference. Police were already tracking his vehicle in relation to alleged drug offences.<\/p>\n
The investigators followed the main suspect in their attempt to recover the two missing panels. Antonetti added that they saw the man meeting with two other men, including a known art criminal. They also saw the main suspect visiting the Fondation Maeght, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, known for its exceptional collection of works by artists such as Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Mir\u00f3, Alexander Calder. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey were clearly planning another criminal operation,\u201d Antonetti said, so the investigators chose to arrest the whole group.<\/p>\n
Three of the suspects have a history of drug dealing, forged money and aggravated thefts. \u201cThere was no outside mastermind,\u201d a source close to the investigation told The Art Newspaper. \u201cWe were facing opportunist thieves who had no clear idea what to do with the stolen works.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The suspects in the recent theft of two Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings were planning another burglary at the Fondation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[92790,442,498,499,500,501,156,12603,111,139,69,30524],"class_list":["post-630679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art-theft","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museums-heritage","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pierre-auguste-renoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630679","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=630679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}