CAGNES-SUR-MER, France: Thieves stole four paintings from the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, the local mayor said, but dropped two of them in the gardens ⁠as police, alerted by alarms, gave chase early on Tuesday.

The most valuable works of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir have fetched dozens of millions of dollars at auctions.

Mayor Bryan Masson did ‌not identify the items stolen by the raiders who broke into the museum a little before 6 a.m. through a hole made ‌in a garden fence to snatch four paintings, ‌in the latest of a series of brazen art thefts ‌in the country.

“Attacking the ‌Renoir museum is attacking a part of the history and heritage of Cagnes-sur-Mer,” Masson said in a message.

Police ‌arrived within five minutes to give chase, leading the ⁠thieves to drop two canvases, but they made off with the other two, added Masson, who initially said just one had been dropped.

The museum, ⁠set up ⁠in 1960 in Renoir’s mansion on a hill near Nice where he died in 1919, had on display a collection of 13 paintings ⁠by the master and some 40 sculptures, items of furniture and photographs.

Art thieves in Europe are committing more violent robberies and specialist gangs have been replaced by ad hoc opportunists recruited through social media, pan-European police body Europol said last month.

It ‌cited as a prime example a heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris in October last year, when thieves stole €88 million ($102.3 million) worth of jewels, such as Empress Eugenie’s tiara. Other French museums were also targeted in the past months.