Truck Carrying 50 Old Masters Stolen in Paris

A truck driver transporting Old Master paintings worth more than $5 million took a break at a bar, leaving the ignition keys on the dashboard, and thieves drove off with the loot, police said today.

A total of 50 canvases by Watteau, Fragonard and Rubens and others from Flemish, Dutch and French schools were aboard the truck when the driver and his crew stopped at the bar in the center of Paris shortly before midnight Tuesday, police said.

“They stopped for a glass and after a while they noticed the truck no longer was outside,” said Christopher Hirel, a bartender at the General Lafayette, a popular watering hole.

“When they realized what was happening they raced into the street,” Hirel told France’s Antenne-2 television. “But the truck had disappeared into thin air.”

Hirel said the driver and his team were regular clients at the General Lafayette, an old-style Parisian brasserie with a zinc-topped bar, sawdust on the floor and a green-and-white awning sheltering tables on the sidewalk.

The truck had collected the artworks from the luxurious Crillon Hotel on the vast Place de la Concorde, where they had been displayed at an exhibit titled “Art Nouveau--Art Deco.”