Two Just Stop Oil activists have been jailed for throwing tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers after they came close to “destroying” the masterpiece.
Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, caused as much as £10,000 worth of damage to the artwork’s gold-coloured frame when they targeted it at London’s National Gallery.
Plummer received a two-year jail term, while Holland was handed 20 months today after they were each found guilty of criminal damage in July.
The protesters, wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts, threw two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work in October 2022.
They then kneeled in front of the painting and glued their hands to the wall beneath it.
Staff at the gallery inspected the painting and frame for damage while the women were still attached to the wall, and were worried the soup may have dripped through the protective glass.
The frame was purchased by the gallery in 1999, the court heard, and was valued at £28,000 before it suffered the estimated £10,000 worth of damage.
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Sentencing the women, Judge Christopher Hehir said the “cultural treasure” could have been “seriously damaged or even destroyed”.
Judge Hehir, who previously jailed the co-founder of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion for five years, continued: “Soup might have seeped through the glass.
“You couldn’t have cared less if the painting was damaged or not.
“You had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers.”
The judge told Plummer, who was also handed a criminal behaviour order: “You clearly think your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel like it. You do not.”
Raj Chada, defending Holland, said the women “did check” the painting was protected by a glass cover before throwing the soup.
Plummer, representing herself, told the hearing: “My choice today is to accept whatever sentence I receive with a smile.
“It is not just myself being sentenced today, or my co-defendants, but the foundations of democracy itself.”
Plummer was also handed a three-month sentence for her part in a slow march which caused long tailbacks in west London in November 2023.
Holland and Plummer were found guilty by a jury after three hours of deliberation in July, after which Judge Hehir said they “came within the width of a pane of glass of destroying one of the most valuable artworks in the world”.
In 2022, Plummer said in front of the painting after throwing the soup: “What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice?
“Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people? The cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost-of-oil crisis.”
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Just five days after her guilty verdict, Plummer was arrested for spraying paint on departure boards at Heathrow Airport.
Painted in Arles in the south of France in August 1888, Van Gogh’s painting shows 15 sunflowers standing in a yellow pot against a yellow background.
The priceless work was the second from the National Gallery to be selected as a target for protest action by Just Stop Oil in 2022 – with two supporters gluing themselves to John Constable’s The Hay Wain in July of that year.
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What does Just Stop Oil want?
Just Stop Oil is a climate activist group which is calling on the British government to commit to ending new fossil fuel licensing and production.
It has drawn attention to its cause by disrupting sport fixtures, blockading roads and vandalising artwork and public institutions like New Scotland Yard.
The group says 26 of its activists are now in prison.
