Renoir museum: Four paintings worth millions stolen in French heist

Four paintings by the impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir have been stolen from a museum in the south of France.

Two thieves broke into the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer on Tuesday morning but dropped two of the paintings in the institution’s garden as they made their escape, local Mayor Bryan Masson said.

“Attacking the Renoir Museum is attacking a part of the history and heritage of Cagnes-sur-Mer,” he said.

The paintings, each worth €9m (£7.7m; $10.4m), are the latest high-profile pieces to have been stolen this year following a string of heists in Europe – which have included four Renaissance paintings being stolen from a museum in Sicily just last month.

CCTV footage has captured the thieves entering the museum gardens by cutting through a fence before they cut through structures holding the paintings’ frames in place, the local mayor said.

He added that two paintings were “abandoned” in the gardens and have now been recovered.

The two paintings that are still missing are:

And the two pieces that were recovered are:

“It’s Renoir’s, it is priceless, you cannot sell it like that,” the mayor told reporters at the museum.