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Works by Monet, Brueghel stolen from museum
2007-08-06
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 at around 1 p.m. (7 a.m. EDT). 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 he organized with two accomplices. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in 2002, of which 3-1/2 years were suspended.
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