French authorities have recovered two stolen paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir valued at approximately €9 million, nearly a month after they were taken from the Musée Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer, a town on the French Riviera. Six individuals connected to the theft have been detained, with one suspect formally charged.

Among those arrested are two alleged burglars believed to have executed the break-in and a suspected fence, who is accused of knowingly dealing in stolen property. The individual facing formal charges has been identified only as Loïc, a 29-year-old man previously detained in 2020 on suspicion of drug dealing while a university student in Nice. If convicted on charges including theft and criminal conspiracy, he could face up to 15 years in prison.

According to legal representatives, authorities traced Loïc to the crime scene through DNA evidence found on packaging left on two of the paintings at the scene. Police arrived within minutes of the museum’s security alarm being triggered. Pursued by a police dog, the perpetrators abandoned two of the four stolen artworks and fled the area in haste, leaving behind key evidence.

Investigators made a crucial breakthrough as detectives involved in a separate case had already placed a GPS tracking device on a vehicle associated with the suspects. After using a stolen car to approach the museum and execute the robbery, the thieves reportedly abandoned it in a rural area and switched to their own vehicle, enabling law enforcement to track their movements.

The two recovered works, "Young Woman at the Well" (circa 1886) and "Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano" (circa 1913), carry complex histories. The latter was purchased by an art dealer and sold to the German embassy in Paris in 1940. Following World War II, the portrait depicting a Jewish actress and friend of Renoir’s son Pierre was recovered and returned to France in 1947.

"Young Woman at the Well" similarly passed into Nazi hands during the war under unclear circumstances. It resurfaced in a private home in Bavaria in 1949 before being repatriated to France. The recent theft and recovery have thus added new chapters to the artworks’ troubled provenance. Police investigations into the remaining two stolen pieces and the broader criminal network continue.