Volkswacht Bodensee - French police hunt Renoir thieves after lightning museum heist

The heist is the latest in a string of such robberies including the daylight theft last year of crown jewellery valued at around $100 million from the Louvre in Paris.

The theft in the southern town of Cagnes-sur-Mer took place in a matter of minutes shortly before 6:00 am.

Town mayor Bryan Masson said the duo appeared "well equipped and well informed" about the museum housing works by French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The suspects cut through a fence to enter the museum's tree-lined grounds, smashed a window to get inside, and used an electric saw to cut through the frame mountings, he said.

"The museum and police sirens forced the burglars to hurry, stealing only four works from the Renoir Museum," added the mayor.

Of those four, two were "left behind in the gardens of the Renoir museum", added the far-right official, whose office earlier estimated the value of the stolen works at 9 million euros ($10 million).

They made off with a portrait titled "Madame Colonna Romano" and the depiction of a woman at a well called "Jeune femme au puits", his office said.

- 'Not first-time offenders' -

The paintings retrieved include "Madame Pichon" and "Coco lisant", a portrait of Renoir's young son Claude reading.

The mayor said it took five minutes for the authorities to respond.

"The museum alarm went off at 5:48 am. At 5:53 am, just five minutes later, our municipal police were on the scene," said Masson.

A representative of a top French police union suggested that reconnaissance work was carried out beforehand.

"These were certainly not first-time offenders," said Lilie Jalabert of the Alliance Police Nationale.

"They were people with some experience who had, at the very least, scoped out the premises before carrying out this crime."

The Renoir Museum lies a half-hour drive from the southern city of Nice, in Renoir's last home before he died aged 78 in 1919.

Its collection comprises nine paintings by Renoir, according to the museum.

It also includes several sculptures by him, as well as objects and furniture that belonged to the painter, such as his easel and wheelchair.

Some of his more famous works are on display at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, as well as in London and New York.

- 'Heritage of all French' -

The mayor urged the culture ministry to earmark substantial funding to better protect France's museums.

"It is the heritage of all French people that has today become the target of gangs," he said.

A spate of heists at French museums, including at the Louvre, has highlighted inadequate security in some cases and led to questions about whether criminal gangs see them as soft targets.

The four suspected Louvre robbers have been arrested, but the jewels they are accused of grabbing in the seven-minute heist have still not been found.

Italian police in August said they had recovered paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth over $10.4 million that were stolen in a three-minute heist from a museum in March.

In one of France's most high-profile art thefts, in 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's famed "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The robber turned out to be an Italian glazier who helped frame the museum's paintings. He was caught two years later when he tried to sell the artwork.

K.Hofmann--VB