Artists plead for activists who threw soup on a Van Gogh to be spared jail

The protest action at the National Gallery in October 2022 did not damage the painting. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian

More than 100 artists, curators and art historians are making a plea for two activists who hurled tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers to be spared a jail sentence.

There was no damage to the picture, which is one of the Dutch artist’s most famous paintings and worth millions of pounds, but it did cause minor damage to the frame.