4 Renoir paintings stolen from his house museum on the French Riviera: yet another €9 million ($9.9 million) heist in France

Thieves stole four Renoir paintings worth €9 million ($9.9 million) from his house museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, leaving two behind. Early Tuesday morning, France woke up to another art heist, this time at the former home of Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer, not far from Nice. Around 5:48 am, two thieves broke into the building where the Impressionist master spent his final years before his death in 1919 — turned into a museum in 1960 — and cut four famous paintings straight out of their frames. @Les Musées de Cagnes-sur-Mer Despite the alarm going off immediately and municipal police arriving on scene at 5:53 am, the pair got away — though not before security cameras caught them on tape. The town's mayor, Bryan Masson, expressed his dismay over the incident and put the total value of the stolen works at roughly €9 million ($9.9 million). https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdBap4loVqi/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== What was taken, and how the thieves fled During their hasty getaway, the two men had to leave part of the loot behind. According to details leaked by the Grasse public prosecutor's office, the four canvases taken were Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano , Young Woman at the Well , Coco Drawing , and Portrait of Madame Stephen Pichon . That last painting, dated 1895, turns out to be one of the two works recovered by police right outside the building. The museum — which also holds period furniture, the painter's wheelchair, and his easel — was temporarily closed to the public to allow for forensic work, with reopening expected Wednesday morning. France's museums keep getting hit — and so does everyone else's The Cagnes-sur-Mer break-in is only the latest in a string of attacks on cultural institutions over the past year. It follows the headline-grabbing Paris heist, where thieves made off with eight Crown Jewels worth €88 million ($96.8 million), a theft that eventually cost director Laurence des Cars her job. In recent months there have been other notable cases too, including the theft of a gold necklace in Châtillon-sur-Seine and a €4.5 million ($4.95 million) heist at the Lalique Museum in Wingen-sur-Moder. Italy hasn't been spared either. In early August, police recovered three paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse that had been stolen back in March from the museum of the Fondazione Magnani Rocca, near Parma. On the evening of Ferragosto, though, four works by Antonello da Messina were stolen from the MuMe in Messina and remain missing, even as investigators look into one of the guards on duty that night over allegedly false testimony. Source: ICI