Paris – Five armed, masked thieves sprinted into an art museum on the French Riviera during opening hours Sunday afternoon, snatched a Claude Monet and three other masterpieces off the walls, stuffed them in bags and made their getaways by motorcycle and car, French authorities said Monday.
The brazen robbers, clad in jumpsuits, ordered guards to lie on the floor at gunpoint as accomplices fanned through the galleries of Nice’s Museum of Fine Arts.
One thief grabbed French impressionist Claude Monet’s evocative “The Cliff near Dieppe” while his accomplices snared a painting of a poplar tree alley by impressionist Alfred Sisley and two works by Flemish artist Jan Bruegel the Elder, according to the French Ministry of Culture.
The thieves tried to steal a fifth painting, but it was too large to fit in their bags, according to witnesses cited in French media accounts. About half a dozen visitors were in the museum at the time, authorities said.
The five men then ran out of the ornate 19th-century villa that houses the museum; two hopped on a motorcycle, and the three others leaped into a waiting car and sped away, authorities said.
“Who could expect to be held up in broad daylight like that?” Patricia Grimaud, deputy curator of the museum, said in a telephone interview Monday from Nice. “They were really bold and quick, it took them only 10 minutes.”
Museum officials said the 1897 Monet and 1890 Sisley impressionist paintings had been stolen in a previous incident involving the same museum nine years ago.
The Monet was later found in a boat under repair at a marina, and the Sisley was recovered in the sewers of Marseilles on France’s southern coast, according to French media reports.
Authorities said the oil paintings would be impossible to sell on the open art market.
