According to authorities, two thieves breached a perimeter fence, gained entry through a window, and made off with four valuable Renoir paintings from a small museum on the French Riviera on Tuesday, though they discarded two of the artworks during their escape.

Investigators have since initiated a nationwide manhunt for the culprits.

The entire operation was concluded in under three minutes and was directed at the museum’s most prized pieces in the Renoir Museum in the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

The theft brought back painful memories of the spectacular heist of the crown jewels at the Louvre Museum in Paris last year and renewed calls for better security and more funding for the many cultural sites, large and small, that dot France's landscape.

Cagnes-sur-Mer Mayor Bryan Masson estimated the combined value of the Renoir works stolen on Tuesday at 9 million euros ($10.5 million), though experts in art theft cautioned that they would prove exceedingly difficult to sell.

The Musée Renoir is housed in the final residence of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, where he resided until his death in 1919.

It stands as the preeminent landmark of Cagnes-sur-Mer, a town situated along the Mediterranean coastline between Cannes and Nice.

The “well-equipped” and “well-informed” thieves gained entry to the Renoir Museum through the garden, Masson told reporters at the scene.

They used an electric knife or saw to cut through a fence, entered the museum on the ground floor, and then cut the clips holding the artwork frames, Masson said in comments reported by local broadcaster Ici Azur.

The museum’s alarm system was triggered at 5:48 a.m. local time, with police arriving on the scene five minutes later, the mayor stated.

Their prompt response “forced the burglars to flee in haste and helped limit the scale of the theft,” the mayor remarked in a written statement issued to reporters.

Two of the stolen works were discovered abandoned in the museum garden — Renoir’s “Portrait of Madame Pichon” and “Coco Reading,” the prosecutor’s office stated.

The two still unaccounted for are “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano” and “Young Woman at the Well.”

At least two of the works targeted on Tuesday had a checkered past.

″Young Woman at the Well″ is presumed to have been plundered by the Nazis during the Second World War, and was retrieved in Bavaria in 1949 before being repatriated to France, as documented in the French Culture Ministry's inventory of looted artworks.

According to the database, a German officer stationed in Paris handed ″Coco Reading″ to a fellow German soldier at the close of the war, with explicit orders to transport it to Germany.

The soldier subsequently passed it on to a German priest, who in turn relinquished it to a Berlin museum in 1972.

It was not until 1994 that the German government repatriated the item to France.

The mayor stated that the Cagnes-sur-Mer museum possessed a dozen Renoir works in its entirety.

The institution remained shuttered on Tuesday as the investigation was being conducted.

The Marseille prosecutor has launched an inquiry into organized gang theft, with the French national office for trafficking in cultural goods joining the investigation.

“This incident ought to serve as a cautionary tale regarding the safeguarding of our museums,” the mayor remarked.

Art theft expert James Ratcliffe of the Art Loss Register argued that chronic underfunding is the primary challenge facing museums worldwide, not just in France.

Smaller museums are particularly at risk due to their limited budgets.

‘’The theft of the Louvre has demonstrated to all those with criminal intentions that museums are potentially vulnerable targets,'' he said.

‘’People are now perceiving museums through a different lens.''

Unlike the Louvre heist or other recent museum thefts that target gold or jewels, which can be melted down or recut, the Renoir theft leaves the thieves in a difficult position.

Although the paintings are of considerable value, likely commanding seven-figure sums, finding a buyer willing to pay that amount will be nearly impossible for them, Ratcliffe said.

Unless they have prepared a contingency plan in advance, they cannot simply approach an art dealer and say, ‘Look, I have these two fine Renoirs—would you be interested in purchasing them?’