Two Just Stop Oil activists have been jailed for pouring 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.
The protesters, wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts, threw two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work in October 2022, before kneeling down in front of the painting and gluing their hands to the wall beneath it.
Staff at the gallery inspected the painting, worth up to £72.5m, 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 pair had been to the museum in Trafalgar Square a day before the incident and bought the tins of soup from a Tesco supermarket in central London.
They denied but were convicted of damaging property by a jury after a four day trial at Southwark Crown Court.
Plummer said she had ‘made peace’ with her decision and smiled as she was handed her sentence.
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.’
Visitors at the gallery were heard gasping ‘Oh my gosh’ as the painting was attacked during the protest which was filmed and quickly uploaded onto JSO’s Twitter page.
Raj Chada, defending Holland, said the women ‘did check’ that 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.’
Both Plummer and Holland refused to say who they took instructions from before they carried out the publicity stunt.
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 of criminal damage 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’.
Francesca Kolar, prosecuting, said: ‘Whilst this risked serious damage to a priceless painting by one of the greatest artists – Vincent Van Gogh – there was, we say, actual damage to the seventeenth century Italian frame chosen specifically to house this painting by The National Gallery in 1999.’
Prosecutor Ben Lloyd said that the antique frame, originally worth £28,000, had suffered around £10,000 worth of damage.
Frame conservator Isabella Kocum said in a statement read to jurors: ‘I was shocked and dismayed by the extent of corrosion this tomato soup had caused to the exquisite antique frame.
‘The frame was specifically chosen for Van Gogh’s painting because of the matching coloration.
‘I remain amazed at how corrosive the soup was to the frame.’
‘Even once the majority of the soup had been removed, I was alarmed to see that the remainder was acting like a paint stripper in front of my eyes.’
In 2022, Plummer said in front of the painting: ‘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.’
In July, just five days after her guilty verdict, Plummer was arrested for spraying paint on departure boards at Heathrow Airport.
A number of Just Stop Oil supporters gathered outside the court, some of whom held posters of historical figures jailed for activism.
Plummer, who once likened herself to Martin Luther King, has lived a life of serene luxury being privately educated at St Mary’s Ascot boarding school in Berkshire before studying social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
She grew up in her parents £2.85million Chelsea townhouse but according to court hearings now resides at a house in Lambeth.
It is not known if the professional protester has managed to find gainful employment to support herself in her new digs, but according to an interview in the Times it seems unlikely.
She boasted: ‘I don’t have to work three jobs to feed my kids or pay heating bills which means I can dedicate time towards fighting.’