A manhunt is underway after thieves broke into the Renoir Museum on the French Riviera early on Tuesday and stole several paintings estimated to be worth €9 million, the mayor of Cagnes‑sur‑Mer said.
The burglars entered the museum shortly before 6 a.m. and took four works, dropping one as they left. The stolen pieces are the Portrait of Madame Pichon (1895), Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano (1910), Coco Lisant (1905) and Jeune fille au puits (1886), all by the French impressionist Pierre‑Auguste Renoir.
A municipal police dog spooked the thieves, forcing them to abandon two paintings in the museum garden. The deputy mayor said the police arrived within five minutes of the alarm, and investigators are still determining exactly what was taken.
The heist follows a recent raid on Paris’s Louvre that yielded €88 million in jewels, and comes amid a broader trend of violent art thefts across Europe. EU regulators have introduced new rules to curb the trade of stolen works, but experts say a market still exists outside Brussels’ reach, and buyers are urged to conduct high‑level due diligence when acquiring artworks.
