A month-long art heist saga on the French Riviera has reached a turning point. Two Renoir paintings stolen from the Renoir Museum last month have been recovered, and six suspects have been arrested, local authorities said Friday. The mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Bryan Masson, called the news "immense joy and a great relief" for the town.
The recovered works are "Madame Colonna Romano" (1910) and "Young Woman at the Well" (1886), both belonging to Paris' Orsay Museum and on loan to the museum. Renoir's paintings have fetched tens of millions of dollars at auction.
Masson praised the investigators but offered no details on how the paintings were tracked down. He scheduled a press conference for Friday at 5 p.m. local time. The Marseille prosecutor's office has not disclosed how the works were recovered; the investigation continues.
The burglary took place in the early hours of September 8. Thieves cut a hole in the museum garden's fence, smashed a window to enter, and used an electric saw to cut the paintings from their mountings. The entire operation took less than three minutes and targeted the museum's most valuable works.
The thieves initially stole four paintings but abandoned two — "Madame Pichon" and "Coco Reading," a portrayal of Renoir's young son Claude — in the gardens as municipal police, alerted by alarms, arrived and gave chase.
According to the Nice-Matin newspaper, police arrested suspects on October 7 in coordinated operations across four departments: the Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Hérault, and Doubs. Two of those detained are believed to be the actual burglars. Some outlets report the suspects may be linked to an organized criminal network, though prosecutors have not confirmed that.
The theft evoked memories of the 2025 Louvre crown-jewels heist — the suspects in that robbery were arrested, but the jewels remain missing. The string of high-profile art thefts across Europe has revived calls for better security and funding for museums large and small.
The Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, was the Impressionist's final residence — he died there in 1919. Opened as a museum in 1960, it houses 12 of Renoir's works along with his easel, wheelchair, photographs, and personal letters. For the small town, the museum is the last witness to the painter's final years — which is why, the mayor said, the whole town could finally breathe again.