Musée Robbery
Two Renoir Paintings Stolen in France
Early on Sept. 8, a pair of thieves broke into the Musée Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France. Armed with an electric saw, they cut through the bolts holding famous painter Pierr-Auguste Renoir’s paintings on the wall. A museum alarm triggered at 5:48 a.m., which prompted the thieves to flee. Despite police arriving on the scene within five minutes, the thieves had escaped with four paintings.
Surveillance cameras captured the two thieves dropping one of the paintings in a museum garden as they escaped, with an investigation in the garden uncovering a second abandoned painting. The paintings that were abandoned were "Portrait of Madame Stephen Pichon" and "Coco lisant." However, the thieves still escaped with two of Renoir’s works: "Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano" and "Young Woman at the Well." Due to the robbery, the museum was closed on Tuesday, Sept. 8. The museum is located in Renoir’s last home before his death which displayed 12 of his paintings.
The stolen paintings were valued at $10.5 million. However, a common misconception among art robbers is that the art retains its value after being stolen: buyers do not want stolen art, so the value of these paintings is far lower than the original estimate.
The probability of profiting off such a heist is extremely low. According to Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, in cases that end in arrests, most people note that thieves are just people who are good at stealing, but they never consider the consequences.
This theft has followed a recent uptick in the amount of art robberies in the past year. In March, thieves in Italy escaped with "Still Life with Cherries" by Paul Cézanne, "Fish" by Renoir and "Odalisque on the Terrace" by Henri Matisse. In October of 2025, thieves stole French crown jewels worth an estimated $102 million from the Louvre Museum in Paris, and in September of 2025, thieves stole three valuable porcelain artworks from a French museum.
Investigators have not determined the suspects’ identities. "Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano" and "Young Woman at the Well" remain missing, along with the thieves.
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