Thieves steal paintings worth £7.5million from Renoir museum in latest major heist in France

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Two thieves broke into the Musée Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera, in the early hours of Tuesday morning and made off with artworks belonging to the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in what is being described as the latest in a run of high-profile art thefts across France. Bryan Masson, the mayor of the town, said the pair took four pieces but dropped one as they escaped after being picked up by the town's CCTV network. His office put the combined value of the works at around 9 million euros, equivalent to roughly £7.5-7.7 million depending on the exchange rate used.

Masson said the museum's alarm sounded at 5.48am and that municipal police reached the scene within five minutes, by 5.53am, though the burglars had already fled by the time officers arrived. Reporting on how the intruders gained access varied: French media cited by one outlet suggested a window may have been forced, while other coverage indicated CCTV footage appeared to show the pair cutting into several canvases before making off with them. One report identified the abandoned work as a portrait of Madame Stephen Pichon, with the three pieces successfully taken said to include a portrait of Madame Colonna Romano, a work titled The Young Woman at the Well, and the well-known Coco Reading. The Musée Renoir occupies the house where the artist spent his final years before his death in 1919, and holds furniture, personal effects such as his easel and wheelchair, and a range of his portraits, landscapes and nudes.

The break-in is the latest blow to French museum security less than a year after a brazen daylight robbery at the Louvre in Paris, in which eight items were taken; estimates of their worth varied between reports, ranging from roughly £76 million to around €88 million. Four suspects in that raid have since been arrested, but the stolen pieces have not been recovered despite an extensive investigation involving police in Belgium, Italy and elsewhere. One account noted that the case at the Renoir museum has been handed to France's organised crime squad, while another reported that Europol had recently warned that art theft in Europe is increasingly carried out by loosely organised opportunists recruited via social media, rather than the specialist gangs traditionally associated with such crimes.

Coverage differed on how much context to give the wider pattern of thefts. One report placed the incident within a broader security push by France's Ministry of Culture, which unveiled a 33-point plan in July aimed at relocating vulnerable objects to safer settings, and pointed to other recent losses, including a 2,500-year-old Celtic gold necklace stolen from a museum in Châtillon-sur-Seine and roughly €4.5 million in jewellery taken from the Lalique museum in Wingen-sur-Moder, both in July. That same report also noted Mayor Masson's political affiliation with Marine Le Pen's National Rally party and his election earlier this year, details not mentioned elsewhere. Investigations into the Renoir museum theft continue, with the stolen paintings not yet recovered.

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