Two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir have been stolen from the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer in the French Riviera, the BBC reports. Two thieves entered by cutting a hole in a fence and grabbed four works but abandoned two, Portrait de Madame Pichon (1895) and Coco lisant (1905), on their way out. Jeune femme au puits (1886) and Portrait de Madame Colonna Romano (1910), with an estimated joint value of €9m, are still missing. French museums have been hit by a number of heists in the last year: crown jewels at the Louvre last October, a gold torc dating to c. 500 BC from the Musée du Pays Châtillonnais in Burgundy in July and €4.5m-worth of jewellery from the Musée Lalique in north-east France, also in July. The mayor’s office in Cagnes-sur-Mer has said that ‘every possible effort’ is being made to find those responsible for the latest theft.
A police officer in front of the Renoir Museum, Cagnes-sur-Mer, on 8 September 2026, the day four paintings were stolen from the museum. Photo: Valery Hache/AFP via Getty Images
