NICE, France — Reuters Last updated on Friday, Apr. 03, 2009 10:20AM EDT
Armed thieves marched into an open museum in the southern French city of Nice and stole four paintings by Impressionists Monet and Sisley, and Flemish painter Jan Brueghel the Elder, police said on Monday.
The four men, wearing masks and helmets, forced staff at Nice's Cheret Museum to lie on the ground on Sunday before they took the works of art and left about 1 p.m. local time.
Police said the men were probably working to order, as the stolen works – Claude Monet's Cliffs near Dieppe, Alfred Sisley's Lane of Poplars at Moret-sur-Loing and Brueghel's Allegory of Water and Allegory of Earth are well known, making them hard to sell.
"They are priceless works, not at all negotiable on the market," the museum's deputy curator, Patricia Grimaud, told Reuters, adding it was not the first time the two Impressionist paintings had disappeared.
In 1998, Jean Forneris, the museum's curator at the time, stole the pieces in a theft organized with two accomplices.
He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in 2002, of which 3½ years were suspended.
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