Vandals rip priceless museum Monet

Drunken vandals broke into a Paris museum and punched a hole through a priceless Monet painting.

The gang got in to the Orsay Museum through a back door yesterday and during the city’s annual all-night festival which brings thousands to the streets for concerts and exhibitions.

A security camera caught a group of four to five people entering the museum, which houses a major collection of Impressionist art on the Left Bank of the Seine.

An alarm sounded and the group left, but not before damaging Le Pont d’Argenteuil, a view of the Seine at a rural bend, featuring a bridge and boats.

The painting has a horizontal four-inch tear about 4 inches which exposes threads of canvas but experts hope it can be fully restored.

Culture Minister Christine Albanel said: “We know there were four or five people, likely four boys and a girl, who entered around midnight to 1 a.m., broke a door that was, perhaps, fragile.”

“It appears they were drunk. ... Someone punched the magnificent masterpiece by Monet.

“It’s always a heartbreak when an art object that is our memory, our heritage, that we love and that we are proud of is victim of a purely criminal act,” she said.

Claude Monet led the 19th century Impressionist movement, experimenting notably with light and colour in works now deemed priceless.