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Two thieves are being hunted by police in southern France after they broke into a museum dedicated to French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, stealing “four works of art”, dropping one as they fled.
According to the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer Bryan Masson, the pair were “spotted thanks to the town’s video surveillance cameras… abandoning one of the stolen paintings as they ran.”
It’s estimated the haul of the stolen good is worth around €9 million euros. No details of the works snatched have been released.
Authorities in the French Riveira town say the alarm at the museum went off at 5h48 on Tuesday morning and police were on the scene five minutes later.
The Renoir Museum, located between Cannes and Nice, is the Mediterranean coastal town most famous attraction.
Open since 1960, it was the painter’s last home before his death in 1919 from pulmonary congestion when he was 78-years old.
Its collection includes portraits, landscapes and nudes painted by Renoir as well as objects and furniture which belonged to artist.
Renaissance robberies
The heist comes just under a month since Italian police recovered Renoir paintings among several other Renaissance artists works stolen in less than three minutes from a villa near Parma in northern Italy in March.
Video footage released by police showed two thieves wearing headlamps and with their faces covered entering the Magnani-Rocca Foundation by breaking through a window.
They headed straight into a room where the three paintings hung and took them off the wall, before heading back to the window and passing them through to an accomplice waiting outside.
Art crime experts say works that are instantly recognisable are often stolen to order as they can not be sold through reputable channels. Instead, it’s thought the goods often pass between criminals as collateral for other illegal activity.
Security at museums and galleries in France has been under general scrutiny since October last year when eight items worth around €100 million were snatched during a daring daylight robbery from the Louvre.
The four suspected robbers have been arrested but the stolen items are yet to be recovered despite an international hunt.