Renoir's Recovered!: Bricked-Up Beauties & Bungling Burglars
Two stolen Renoirs, a cinderblock wall, and a trail of DNA. French police have recovered $4.7 million worth of Paintings. The works (and the thieves’ getaway plan) had a few holes in them.
Stealing a masterpiece is one thing. Finding the perfect hiding spot is another. French police have recovered two Renoir paintings stolen in September from the Renoir Museum on the French Riviera, where they were concealed behind a solid cinderblock wall in a house 220 miles away. A Halloween-y hiding place worthy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado. Fortunately, unlike Poe’s unfortunate victim, the Renoirs lived to see another day.
The stolen works, Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano (1910) and Young Woman at the Well (1886), are worth an estimated $4.7 million combined. Both were damaged and will need restoration.
During the burglary, thieves used an electric saw to cut four paintings from their mounts. They abandoned two in the museum garden as police arrived in under five minutes, escaping with the other pair. Not the smoothest museum visit.
Investigators caught a break when they found a suspect’s DNA on a protective sleeve left behind at the scene. They also tracked a vehicle associated with a 29-year-old man already under surveillance in an earlier drug investigation. The burglars had reportedly switched from a stolen car to his vehicle—an unfortunate choice when the police were already keeping tabs on it.
Six suspects have been arrested, including two accused of carrying out the burglary and another suspected of acting as a middleman for stolen goods. Authorities believe they may also have prevented another imminent theft, possibly at a nearby modern art museum.
The paintings are now headed for restoration. The suspects, meanwhile, have learned an inconvenient lesson: a cinderblock wall can hide a Renoir, but it can’t hide your DNA or your car.
Renoir painted scenes of leisure and pleasure. This one offered rather less of both.