Renoir paintings are worth a fortune, but not when they’re stolen

Two Renoir paintings stolen from a small French museum have yet to be recovered but if the thieves are hoping to cash in on the artwork, they would be hard-pressed to find a buyer.

Selling well-known, stolen art is impossible to do at an auction house or through other public channels without raising eyebrows. Even under the table, the value plummets. And unlike other eye-catching artifacts such as jewels, paintings can’t be chopped up and sold for parts without losing their entire worth.

Art crime experts stress that most buyers simply don’t want the liability. In short, the reality looks nothing like the movies.

“People always think that there is this kind of ‘Dr. No’ type from the James Bond movie,” said Arthur Brand, a private art detective based in the Netherlands. “But that’s Hollywood. In the real world, there are no collectors like that.”

Brand, who has investigated art crime for about 20 years, explains that often “nobody will touch” stolen art, particularly high-profile work. Sometimes that means paintings valued at millions of dollars are effectively “worth zero” once they’re outside of the museum, he added, if not a small fraction of the price.

Tuesday’s theft at the Renoir Museum — the last home of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the French Riviera — marks the latest high-profile art crime targeting collections around the world, and experts warn there could be more.

Here’s what we know.

Where the Renoirs could wind up

Cagnes-sur-Mer’s mayor, Bryan Masson, said a group of “well-equipped” burglars stole a total of four Renoir paintings from the museum in his town on Tuesday. But they dropped two of them — Renoir’s “Portrait of Madame Pichon” and “Coco Reading” — in the museum garden before they fled, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Police are still searching for the perpetrators.

In the meantime, Renoir’s “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano” and “Young Woman at the Well” remain missing.

Masson estimated the value of the combined Renoir works stolen Tuesday at 9 million euros ($10.5 million).

But the probability of profiting off such a heist is “extremely low,” said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. And in cases that end in arrests, the common takeaway is that “thieves are people who are good at stealing things and bad at thinking through the consequences,” she added.

Some may try to make money from heists in other ways, such as through demanding a ransom or looking for an insurance payout. But Thompson explains many museums don’t have insurance because it’s too costly. That’s why the practice is so rare in the U.S., for example, and it would be difficult to negotiate with insurance companies elsewhere without the thieves incriminating themselves.

As a result, if not surrendered or otherwise recovered, stolen paintings may remain hidden — or in some cases eventually destroyed to get rid of evidence, Thompson says.

Brand, who collaborates regularly with law enforcement in his art crime investigations, says that he’s still seen limited cases of stolen paintings “floating around in the underworld” — perhaps as partial payments for products like drugs. And depending on country-by-country laws, he noted that the promise of returning the art has led to reduced sentences on other charges.

“Some more savvy criminal will acquire it as a get out of jail free card, sort of a bargaining chip,” added Christopher Marinello, a lawyer and founder of Art Recovery International. “So if some drug dealer ever is arrested, he can bargain with the prosecutor and say, ‘Listen, give me a lesser sentence and I’ll show you where these Renoirs are.’ And that has always worked and it will work again.”

Paintings are harder to hide and sell than jewels

Stolen paintings are much more difficult to profit from than museums’ other crown jewels — literally.

Jeweled and metal goods have increasingly become a target of theft because they can be melted down or broken down into parts. Last year, a handful of experts warned that could be the fate of the stunning heist of crown jewels at the Louvre Museum in Paris, for example — noting that, if done successfully, smaller pieces could later go up for sale as part of a new necklace, earrings or other jewelry without turning too many heads.

But of course, such pieces would lose their historical worth and, if actually sold, likely only go for a fraction of their original value. Experts also warn that it’s far from a simple process overall — and gems may still be identifiable by characteristics like clarity, for example.

Apart from an emerald-set imperial crown found outside the museum the day of the October 2025 heist, the stolen jewels remain unrecovered.

Paintings, in contrast, don’t have the same commodity value that can potentially be parceled off. “It’s a canvas with some old oil paint on it,” said art theft expert James Ratcliffe, of the Art Loss Register. “You can’t touch it up. You can’t resell it other than for what it is.”

Uptick in art crime overall

Ratcliffe and others note that hasn’t stopped thefts of famous paintings and other artwork from museums. Just earlier this year, three pieces by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse worth millions of euros were stolen in Italy, for example, before being recovered last month.

Ratcliffe notes that smaller museums, in particular, are harder to secure because they might not have the funding necessary to invest in the latest technology — or are located in historic buildings that may take more time and effort to install new guardrails.

Still, pressures are piling up, with some warning that future cases of art theft could be likely as vulnerabilities persist.

“We need to change the way we treat small and country house museums before we lose our cultural heritage permanently,” said Marinello, who stresses that stronger security and enforcement is overdue. “We’re supposed to be preserving our cultural heritage, not allowing criminals to take what they want and using them as shopping malls.”

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Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

Wyatte Grantham-philips, The Associated Press