San Francisco Frontiers - Two Renoir paintings missing after break-in at 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.

Bryan Masson, the mayor of the southern town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, said the duo appeared "well equipped and well informed" about the museum housing works by French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

"They were equipped with a metal saw and cut through the pistons that held the frames of Renoir's works," he said.

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

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.

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

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 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.

- '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 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.

Q.Nelson--SFF