Culture News

Thieves cut a fence at Renoir's Riviera home and escape with two paintings worth €9m

Two thieves broke into the Musée Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, early on Tuesday, September 8, and escaped with two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Guardian reported. The mayor, Bryan Masson, said they cut through the garden fence, entered on the ground floor and cut the clips holding the frames. Police arrived about five minutes after the 5.48am alarm.

The stolen works, Young Woman at the Well and Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano, were on loan from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Two others, Portrait of Madame Pichon and Coco Reading, a picture of Renoir's son Claude, were dropped in the gardens. The mayor's office valued the stolen paintings at €9m. The museum, set up in 1960 in the house where Renoir died in 1919, also holds his easel and wheelchair.

Gulf News, carrying AFP, highlighted the mayor's call for culture ministry money to protect museums.

“It is the heritage of all French people that has today become the target of gangs” — Bryan Masson, via Gulf News (AFP)

The Guardian set the theft beside last October's Louvre jewel raid and this summer's thefts in Italy, and quoted James Ratcliffe of the Art Loss Register warning that museums are seen as “relatively easy targets”.

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — the break-in step by step and the European pattern.
• Gulf News (AFP) — a mayor demanding state funding for security.
• The Star (Reuters) — the follow-up: recovery and arrests.

Where the numbers differ: AFP's text says two paintings were stolen, while its photo caption says four; the difference is the two works left in the garden.

What happened next: On October 9 the mayor announced that the two missing paintings had been recovered and six people arrested, The Star reported.