Two Renoir paintings recovered after France museum heist, mayor says

The recovered Renoir paintings, valued at millions, were stolen in a daring heist at Cagnes-sur-Mer last month. Two paintings by the French Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir that were stolen from a museum in southern France a month ago have been recovered, the town’s mayor said. “These two paintings are not simply works of art. They are part of our city’s history,” Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, said on Friday. “Knowing they have been recovered is an immense relief.” Six people have been arrested in connection with the theft, local authorities said. Masson did not say where the paintings were found or in what condition. Two thieves broke into the Renoir Museum a little before 6am on September 8, cutting through a fence to enter the grounds, smashing a window and using an electric saw to cut the clips securing the frames, Masson said at the time.

The museum alarm sounded at 5:48am, and municipal police arrived five minutes later, forcing the thieves to flee. They had taken four paintings, valued by the mayor at about nine million euros ($10.5m). Two of the stolen works – Renoir’s “Portrait of Madame Pichon” and “Coco Reading” – were later found dropped in the museum garden, the prosecutor’s office said at the time. The two works that remained missing were “Portrait