Six Stolen Picasso Etchings Found Behind Toolboxes in French Home

French police have recovered six Pablo Picasso etchings worth more than €100,000 (about $110,000) from behind toolboxes and a pile of linens in a private home, more than a month after they were stolen from a fine-dining restaurant on the French Riviera.

The authorities said seven people have been arrested in connection with the theft. Investigators have linked the case to a vehicle theft committed a few months earlier in the same region.

How did the theft unfold?

According to the police, two people wearing balaclavas and gloves broke into L'Amandier, a restaurant in the village of Mougins, a few miles north of Cannes, overnight on Oct. 1. A third person kept watch in a car parked nearby. The burglars took the six etchings from the restaurant in under a minute.

"They managed to break in through one of these French doors and stole the six etchings here in less than a minute — it happened really fast," Matthieu Autant, the restaurant's manager, said on national television.

The speed of the break-in is the clearest sign the operation was planned in advance rather than opportunistic.

What was stolen?

The six works belong to Picasso's "Vollard Suite," a set of 100 etchings the artist produced in the early 1930s. The British art collector Christian Levett, who owns L'Amandier, bought them in 2008. They had been on display at the restaurant since 2010, which includes a room dedicated to the artist: the Salon Picasso.

The stolen engravings carry an estimated combined value of over €100,000, roughly $110,000 — an average of about €17,000 per work.

Who is behind it?

Guillaume Plaidy, the commanding officer of the local military police, said he believed the theft was linked to organized crime.

"These offenders are involved in various types of crime, so they'll adapt to whatever brings in money," Plaidy said on national television.

The recovery came without the works suffering a traceable passage through the art market. Instead, they sat hidden in an ordinary regional home for over a month. The seven arrests suggest the police pursued the network behind the heist rather than waiting for the works to surface for sale.

What happens next?

The case now moves to judicial proceedings against the seven suspects. For L'Amandier, the recovery means the Vollard Suite etchings can return to the Salon Picasso, where they had hung for more than a decade. The link to an earlier vehicle theft indicates the investigation may widen to further crimes attributed to the same group.