The two stolen paintings were Young Woman at the Well and Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano.
French police are hunting two thieves who escaped with two Renoir paintings from a museum on the French Riviera after breaking in through a hole cut in its garden fence.
Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, about 16 kilometers west of Nice, said the pair appeared to have been “well equipped and well informed” about the museum, which houses works by the French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in his former home.
The theft early on Tuesday is the latest in a string of recent museum heists in France and across Europe, including the brazen break-in at the Louvre in Paris last October, when thieves stole crown jewellery worth €88m, including tiaras, a brooch, necklaces and earrings.
Masson told the local broadcaster Ici Azur that the two thieves sliced through the museum garden fence with an electric knife or metal saw, entered the building through the ground floor, and then cut the clips securing the artwork frames.
