Two Just Stop Oil activists have been jailed after pouring soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting at the National Gallery.
Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were jailed for two years and 20 months respectively at Southwark Crown Court on Friday for the protest in 2022.
The two women threw tomato soup over the painting - which is protected by glass - in October 2022.
After the protest, the pair removed their jackets to reveal Just Stop Oil t-shirts, before glueing their hands to the wall underneath the artwork.
The court heard the activists had come close to “destroying” the masterpiece and had caused up to £10,000 worth of damage to the gold-coloured frame worth £28,000.
Gallery staff inspected the painting and frame for damage while the women were attached to the wall, and were worried the soup could have dripped through the protective glass.
Phoebe Plummer, then 21, said at the time: “What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”
Judge Christopher Hehir, sentencing, said the painting could have been “seriously damaged or even destroyed”.
He said that soup “might” have seeped through the glass, adding: “You couldn’t have cared less if the painting was damaged or not. You had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers.”
Judge Hehir was the judge who previously jailed the co-founder of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, to five years in prison.
The judge told Plummer: “You clearly think your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel like it. You do not.”
Representing herself, Plummer responded to the judge: “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.”
Raj Chada, defending Holland, said the women had checked the painting was covered by glass before the protest.
Many supporters were outside the court while Plummer and Holland were sentenced, with some holding pictures of historical figures who had been jailed for activism.
Plummer was handed a three-month sentence for her part in a slow march blocking traffic in west London last November.
The pair were found guilty of criminal damage by a jury in July, following three hours of deliberations. Just five days after Plummer was found guilty, she was arrested for spraying the departure boards at Heathrow Airport with orange paint.
Sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh’s most famous painting, was painted in Arles in the south of France in August 1888. It shows 15 sunflowers in a yellow pot against a yellow background.
