Renoir paintings stolen from provincial French museum

PARIS (AP) — Two thieves stole four valuable Renoir paintings Tuesday from a small museum on the French Riviera, but abandoned two of them as they fled, the local mayor said. Police are searching for the perpetrators.

Surveillance camera footage identified two people entering the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer and stealing four paintings, the town’s mayor, Bryan Masson, said in a statement.

The museum’s alarm system went off at 5:48 a.m. and police arrived five minutes later, the mayor’s statement said. He told local newspaper Nice-Matin that two of the stolen paintings were found in the museum’s garden after the thieves fled.

The stolen works included “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano,” “Coco Lisant” and “Young Girl at the Well,” and the overall worth of the stolen paintings is $10.5 million, Nice-Matin reported.

An official with the regiona...