IN BRIEF
- The thieves got away with two Renoir paintings and dropped a second pair during a police chase.
- A French parliamentary report found museums were ill-prepared to safeguard artworks and cultural artefacts.
Two thieves stole two Renoir paintings from a museum on the French Riviera on Tuesday.
Local authorities said the pair broke in shortly before 6 am (2 pm AEST) by cutting a hole in a garden fence and entering through a window.
The stolen paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, whose most valuable works have fetched dozens of millions of dollars at auctions, were Madame Colonna Romano and Young Woman at the Well. Both belong to Paris' famous Orsay Museum and were on loan to the museum.
The thieves had taken two more paintings, Madame Pichon and Coco Reading, a portrayal of Claude, the young son of the famous Impressionist artist, but dropped them in the gardens as police, alerted by alarms, arrived and gave chase, local mayor Bryan Masson and the Marseille prosecutor's office said.
Masson said of the paintings, "They are priceless; you cannot sell them just like that."
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The Marseille prosecutor added that an investigation had been opened into theft by an organised gang.
The museum, set up in 1960 in Renoir's mansion on a hill near Nice where he died in 1919, had 13 paintings by the master on display and some 40 sculptures, items of furniture and photographs.
Masson, a member of the far-right National Rally (RN) party, called for greater security for museums around France.
"This incident should serve as a wake-up call about the protection of our museums, which are now facing a new form of crime targeting works of art," he said.
The French government has come under pressure to tackle dramatic failures in the security of the country’s museums.
A French parliamentary report this summer said museums lacked resources and were ill-prepared to safeguard precious artworks and cultural artefacts.
A culture ministry survey in 2024 found that only one in four institutions had an emergency and risk-prevention plan, and nearly half lacked any video surveillance.
Art thieves in Europe are committing more violent robberies, and specialist gangs have been replaced by ad hoc opportunists recruited through social media, pan-European police body Europol said last month.
It cited a heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris in October last year as a prime example. Other French museums were also targeted in the past months.
"They are attacking all museums now, we must react," Luc, a neighbour of the Renoir museum, told BFM TV.
He was woken up very early by police arriving at the spot of the break-in.
"It's very isolated here."
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