Published September 8th, 2026 - 12:05 GMT
ALBAWABA - Four Renoir paintings, worth millions, were stolen from a museum in southern France on Tuesday – the thieves dropped two of the paintings as they fled.The heist is just the latest in what is becoming a thieving trend in France as it follows the daylight theft last year of crown jewelry valued at around $100 million from the Louvre in Paris.The Renoir Museum, the scene of the crime, is in French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir's last home before he died in 1919, a half-hour drive from the southern city of Nice.Its collection includes nine paintings by Renoir, as well as several sculptures by him, according to the museum website. The paintings stolen were Madame Colonna Romano, Jeune femme au puits, Madame Pichon, and Coco lisant, the latter two were dropped in the escape.🖼️ Another museum robbery in France: thieves steal €9 million worth of Renoir paintingsTwo thieves broke into the Auguste Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera and stole four paintings by the artist.The alarm went off at around 6 a.m., and police arrived just… pic.twitter.com/fdC2SRCnWa— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) September 8, 2026 From there, two thieves stole four works in under five minutes as the police arrived on the scene exactly five minutes after the alarm;Bryan Masson, the mayor of the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, said the duo "were equipped with a metal saw and cut through the pistons that held the frames of Renoir's works," describing them as being "well equipped and well informed" about the museum.However, despite their skill, it seems the thieves dropped two paintings in their rush out of the museum;"The museum and police sirens forced the burglars to hurry, stealing only four works from the Renoir Museum out of the twelve the museum holds," Bryan Masson said.Of those four, two were "left behind in the gardens of the Renoir museum", added Masson, whose office earlier estimated the value of the stolen works at 9 million euros ($10 million).
