Police in France are searching for two thieves who stole two valuable paintings by the famous French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The break-in happened early Tuesday morning at the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, a town on the French Riviera near Nice.
The burglars cut through a fence in the museum garden using an electric knife or saw. They entered the ground floor and cut the clips holding the artwork frames. However, the museum alarm rang at 5:48 a.m., and police arrived just five minutes later. Because officers arrived quickly, the thieves had to escape in a hurry and dropped two of the four paintings they had taken in the garden.
The two stolen artworks are Young Woman at the Well and Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano. Both paintings were on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Bryan Masson, estimated that the stolen paintings are worth about 9 million euros. He noted that the famous artworks would be very difficult for the thieves to sell.
The Renoir Museum is located in the mansion where the impressionist painter lived and died in 1919. Mayor Masson called for stronger security at museums across France, warning that organised crime groups are increasingly targeting artwork. Europol, the European police organisation, also reported recently that museum robberies in Europe are becoming more frequent.