San Francisco Frontiers - Thieves steal Renoir paintings from France museum

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

"The museum and police sirens forced the burglars to hurry, stealing only four works from the Renoir Museum out of the twelve the museum holds," said Bryan Masson, the mayor of the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer.

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).

The Renoir Museum, a half-hour drive from the southern city of Nice, lies in French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir's last home before he died in 1919.

Its collection includes nine paintings by Renoir, according to its website.

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.

- 'Just five minutes' -

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," 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 which 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 de 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.

B.Ramirez--SFF