Two Stolen Renoir Paintings Found After French Police Arrest Suspects
Theo Al Jazeera English
Two Renoir paintings stolen from a French museum in September have been recovered, damaged and hidden behind a false wall, after police arrested six suspects accused of plotting another heist. Investigators say the group had been targeting the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
Two paintings by the Impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir stolen from a French museum last month have been found damaged and hidden behind a false wall in a private home, after police arrested several suspects ahead of what prosecutors described as an imminent second theft.
According to Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone, six suspects were arrested on Wednesday after authorities discovered they were planning to target the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, home to one of Europe's largest collections of modern art. Bessone said the arrests were driven by "very strong suspicions that another theft was about to take place."
"We are clearly seeing the repetition of a criminal scenario," said Eric Antonetti, head of the judicial police for the Alpes-Maritimes department.
According to investigators, on September 8 the thieves used a power saw to cut through a fence and break into the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, a coastal town on the French Riviera. An alarm sounded and police arrived four minutes later — a rapid response that Bessone said "clearly threw the perpetrators into a panic."
The two stolen works are "Madame Colonna Romano" and "Young Woman at the Well" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, valued at around €4.2 million ($4.7 million), according to Bessone.
The burglars also tried to take two other Renoir paintings, "Madame Pichon" and "Coco Reading" — a work depicting the artist's young son Claude. They left those two behind in the museum garden as they fled from police. "As they ran off, they could not carry all four paintings and abandoned two of them, which were later found in a protective bag," he said.
Damaged and torn
The two stolen paintings were found hidden behind a false wall in a house on Friday. Both were damaged and require restoration. One of them, "Madame Colonna Romano," had been torn.
"These two paintings are not merely works of art. They are part of the history of our city," Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer near Nice, said on Friday. "Knowing they have been recovered is a huge relief."
The recovery came almost exactly a month after the theft, following an investigation that used DNA evidence, mobile phone location data and surveillance cameras.
The two main suspects include a 29-year-old man charged after investigators obtained DNA from a bag left behind during the escape. They face charges of organized theft and other offences. A third man, accused of hiding the paintings, was charged with possession of stolen property as part of an organized group. A fourth suspect, who investigators said had been approached to buy the works, was charged with receiving stolen goods and taking part in a criminal conspiracy.
Bessone said the suspects denied planning the second museum break-in, but added that he "does not believe the main suspect visited that museum purely out of a love of art."
