French police on Tuesday, September 8, hunted for two thieves who escaped with two Renoir paintings from a museum, after abandoning two others as they fled, in a burglary that reignited concerns about the protection of France's cultural heritage.

Axar.az reports, citing Le Monde, that the heist is the latest in a string of such robberies in France, including the daylight theft last year of crown jewelry valued at around $100 million from the Louvre in Paris.

The theft in the southern town of Cagnes-sur-Mer took place in a matter of minutes shortly before 6 am. Town mayor Bryan Masson said the duo appeared "well equipped and well informed" about the museum housing works by French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The suspects cut through a fence to enter the museum's tree-lined grounds, smashed a window to get inside and used an electric saw to cut through the frame mountings, he said. "The museum and police sirens forced the burglars to hurry, stealing only four works from the Renoir Museum," added the mayor.

Of those four, two were "left behind in the gardens of the Renoir museum," added the far-right official, whose office earlier estimated the value of the stolen works at €9 million.

They made off with a portrait titled Madame Colonna Romano and the depiction of a woman at a well called Jeune Femme au Puits (Young Woman at the Well), his office said. The paintings retrieved include Madame Pichon and Coco Lisant, a portrait of Renoir's young son Claude reading.