The two missing paintings
Posted on 09/09/2026 7:35:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Two paintings by the impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir have been stolen from a museum in the south of France.
Two thieves broke into the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer early on Tuesday, seizing four paintings but dropping two of the works in the museum gardens as they escaped, local Mayor Bryan Masson said.
The paintings, worth €9m (£7.7m; $10.4m), are the latest high-profile pieces to have been stolen in a string of recent heists in Europe which have thrust the security of art in galleries and museums into the spotlight.
One of the most high-profile was in October last year, when a brazen heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris saw France's priceless crown jewels being stolen.
CCTV footage captured the thieves entering the Renoir museum gardens by cutting through a fence before they cut through structures holding the paintings' frames in place, the local mayor said.
The alarm went off at 05:48 (03:48 GMT), and police were at the scene within five minutes, Masson explained, saying the thieves fled the scene upon hearing the security alarms.
He later told reporters that the thieves seemed to be "well-equipped" and "well-informed".
They were "wearing helmets, gloves, and combat gear" and carrying "an electric knife and hacksaw," he added.
The two missing paintings
The mayor said that two other paintings were "abandoned" in the gardens and have now been recovered.
The two paintings that are still missing are:
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Deja vu......
They’ll show up in a garage sale somewhere and no one will want them.
GREAT artist. Beautiful paintings.
I do not understand why someone would do this. It’s not like jewelry, that can be broken down and ‘fenced’ in a much less recognizable form.
Electric Knife?!
I thought I wanted a Renoir. But now I want an Electric Knife!!
Renoir’s dead. Not going to miss them.
Typically art theives fall into two categories:
(1) It’s a person struck with an almost sudden insanity, spur of the moment, desire and didn’t think it through.
or
(2) much more rarely, it’s thieves with a buyer who hired them for the theft or a person who wants it in their home.
But, you’re correct, in general. It’s essentially impossible to re-sell the paintings, even after 100 years or so passes.
My lawyer has art that was stolen during WWII that was returned to his family after 90 years. Heirs take paintings to Christie’s (or whatever), with no clue it was stolen. A literal Interpol alarm goes out and it’s seized.
Good. Keep importing them. Burning churches and stolen artworks. More such things are coming to France and to Europe overall.
It seems like such a strange mentality to want ownership of something you can never share or show to anyone.
I remember being fascinated by the story of Joe Meador:
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1990/december/a-looters-legacy/
And these, though different kinds of story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_in_Gold_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hare_with_Amber_Eyes
And recall reading this one, too:
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1998/3/stealing-beauty
The Euro-Weenie's legal system causes this. Crime bosses steal art that's too "hot" to fence, then warehouse it to use as a bargaining chip if they ever get arrested and convicted of an unrelated crime.
Then they offer to return some piece of art considered invaluable to European culture in return for a reduced sentence. It's crime that's literally caused by laws that give favorable sentencing to art thieves.
I don’t know how ‘European’ that is. They just want the art back.
In our country, the statute of limitations has run out on the Gardner Museum theft; but the $10 million reward offer still stands. If someone were to come forward now, and return the art or provide information leading to its recovery, they couldn’t be prosecuted. and could still collect the reward.
The museum wants the art back. People and institutions are always weighing values against values. That’s just human nature, nothing ‘Euro-Weenie’ about it.
Thomas Crown, wanted for questioning
I saw the Steve McQueen one. Didn’t see the remake.
I attended a small liberal arts college with a very low student/professor ratio so very few of the classes had the anonymity of a large lecture hall, and professors and classmates were generally instantly recognizable. In a 19th Century Art class, one day we were discussing Renoir, and our professor put up a slide of Les Grandes Baigneuses, a painting of some nude women bathing at the edge of a brook, in and out of the water.
One of the figures in the painting, the younger woman in the lower right of the painting, was an exact double of one of the students in the class. I mean perfect, photographic double. When the slide went up, there was a hushed awkward silence, and even the professor was caught off guard having realized what she may have errantly just done. The match was not lost on the young lady in the class who blushed and lowered her head as everybody in the class couldn't help but look back and forth between her and the painting like they were watching a tennis match. The professor said something like, "You all seem pretty familiar with some of the subject matter of this painting," and quickly advanced to the next slide :-)
These french museums have lousy security systems and guards.
Both are pretty good. Like the original best. Love McQueen’s flicks.
Nonsense! The greatest version is the upcoming Michael B Jordan one, sheesh….
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