Jeune femme au puits by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
In the predawn hours of Tuesday, September 8th, two burglars stole two paintings from the Musée Renoir.
The Musée Renoir is located in the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera between Nice and Cannes. The two thieves broke into the museum at 5:48 a.m. and were gone by the time police arrived, five minutes after the alarm system went off. According to the town’s mayor, Bryan Masson, they had used some sort of saw or electric knife to cut through the bolts affixing the works to the walls. Masson said authorities believe the thieves would have taken more but were likely scared away by the alarm. The burglars had intended to steal four paintings that morning, but made off with only two, abandoning the others. Coco lisant and Portrait of Madame Pichon were recovered, while Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano and Jeune femme au puits are still missing.
The Musée Renoir was once home to the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who purchased it in 1907. The property was originally called the Domaine des Collettes, consisting of a nineteenth-century farmhouse and groves of orange and olive trees. Renoir initially moved to the area for the climate, as it was suggested that proximity to the Mediterranean would improve his health. He commissioned an architect from Nice to expand the house, in which he spent the last eleven years of his life. After Renoir died in 1919, the house passed to his son Claude (the subject of Coco lisant), who lived there until 1960. The Renoir family gave the property to the French state, which preserved it as Claude Renoir had left it and converted it into a museum, furnishing and decorating it with all its contents. Along with the dozen paintings and about forty sculptures Renoir created, the museum collection also includes works by other nineteenth- and twentieth-century French artists, including Pierre Bonnard, Raoul Dufy, and Aristide Maillol.
James Ratcliffe, the Art Loss Register’s general counsel and director of recoveries, commented on the theft. He called the theft “a useful, if sad, reminder that museum security is a complex area”. He further added that museum thefts of precious metals and gemstones have recently been on the rise, most infamously last year’s $102 million heist at the Louvre. However, cultural institutions must still be wary of thieves targeting more traditional art.
The two works stolen from the Musée Renoir are believed to be worth around €9 million.