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Paris: Thieves have stolen three paintings from the Renoir Museum on the French Riviera early on Tuesday, breaking into the museum a little before 6am and taking four paintings.
Cagnes-sur-Mer mayor Bryan Masson said on his Facebook page that the theft was spotted by the city’s CCTV cameras, and police had given chase. In the pursuit, the thieves dropped one painting but they managed to escape with the other three, he said.
“Attacking the Renoir museum is attacking a part of the history and heritage of Cagnes-sur-Mer. These actions are particularly serious,” Masson said in his Facebook post.
The museum was created in 1960 in the mansion of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir on a hill in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, where he died in 1919.
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The collection on display in the museum includes 13 paintings from the master and some 40 sculptures, furniture and photographs. Masson did not identify the paintings that were stolen.
The BBC cited French media reports pegging the estimated value of the stolen works at 9 million euros ($14.5 million).
Renoir’s most valuable works have fetched dozens of millions of dollars at auctions in the past.
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Art thieves in Europe are committing more violent robberies and specialist gangs have been replaced by ad hoc opportunists recruited through social media, pan-European police body Europol said last month.
The heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris in October last year was a prime example of this, Europol said, as the thieves threatened guards and visitors and stole €88 million ($142 million) worth of jewels, such as Empress Eugenie’s tiara.
Reuters, with a staff reporter
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