In an early morning theft that has shaken France’s cultural heritage community, two robbers stole four valuable Pierre-Auguste Renoir artworks from a small coastal museum on the French Riviera on Tuesday, before abandoning two of the pieces during their escape, according to local municipal officials. Law enforcement agencies have launched a full-scale manhunt for the unidentified perpetrators.
Bryan Masson, mayor of the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer where the Renoir Museum is located, released an official statement confirming details of the heist. Footage from the museum’s on-site surveillance system clearly documented two suspects entering the landmark institution and removing four Renoir originals from their displays, Masson said.
The museum’s security alarm was triggered at 5:48 a.m. local time, with responding police officers arriving at the scene just five minutes after the alert went out, the mayor’s statement added. In comments to local French newspaper Nice-Matin, Masson noted that two of the stolen paintings were quickly recovered in the museum’s landscaped gardens shortly after the thieves fled the property.
Per local reports from Nice-Matin, the three unrecovered stolen works include *Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano*, *Coco Lisant* and *Young Girl at the Well*, bringing the total estimated value of all four stolen pieces to $10.5 million. A senior official from the regional police administration, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with departmental protocol, confirmed the theft and the ongoing search for suspects, adding that a formal criminal investigation has been opened. The official however declined to confirm the reported $10.5 million valuation of the stolen artworks.
The Renoir Museum remained closed to the public all Tuesday as investigators processed the crime scene and collected evidence. In a strongly worded response to the incident, Mayor Masson emphasized that targeting the museum amounted to an attack on a core piece of Cagnes-sur-Mer’s cultural and historical identity. “Attacking the Renoir Museum is attacking a part of the history and heritage of Cagnes-sur-mer,” he said.
Masson also used the incident to call for sweeping upgrades to security standards at cultural institutions across France, arguing that more must be done to protect the country’s priceless artistic legacy. Tuesday’s heist comes one year after a high-profile theft of crown jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris, a separate incident that also sparked widespread debate over cultural site security in France.
Nestled between the iconic Mediterranean resort towns of Cannes and Nice, the Renoir Museum occupies the former private residence of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the leading French Impressionist painter who lived in the home until his death in 1919. The site is the most popular tourist attraction in Cagnes-sur-Mer, drawing thousands of art lovers from across the globe each year.