Stolen paintings recovered

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32458, 19 November 1970, Page 17

Stolen paintings recovered

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, November 18. The Paris police have recovered one of the world’s finest, but uninsured, private collections of impressionist paintings, because a gang of thieves was apparently unable to sell them.

The 17 paintings—including seven by Renoir, three by Pissarro, two by Monet and two by Sisley—were stolen from the Paris flat of a woman collector, aged 80, last August. Mrs Albert Chardeau inherited the collection from her uncle, the impressionist painter, Gustave Caillebotte, who tried to sell them at the turn of the century, but was unable to find a buyer. All the masterpieces, worth a total of eight million francs ($1,317,150), were well known to galleries and dealers

throughout the world, and the police say that the thieves were evidently unable to dispose of them through normal underworld channels. The collection was found, undamaged, last night in a disused Paris underground railway station. Mrs Chardeau said today: “I am overcome. I did not expect this marvellous news. I had lost all hope of seeing the canvasses again. It was not so much their value, but that they Represented a family heritage. My worst fear was that the thieves had destroyed the paintings.”