Just stop the oil protesters who were jailed for throwing soup at sunflowers

Two Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists have been jailed for throwing soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers after they came close to “destroying” the masterpiece.

They were Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22 Previously convicted of criminal damage After pouring the contents of two cans of tomato soup onto the priceless 1888 piece in the National Gallery in central London.

Then they stuck their hands to the wall below him.

The pair caused £10,000 worth of damage to the gold frame of the glass-covered painting in the October 2022 attack.

Plummer, from Clapham in south-west London, was sentenced to two years in prison at Southwark Crown Court, while Holland, from Newcastle, was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Outside the court, a number of supporters of the Journalists Syndicate gathered, some of whom carried posters of historical figures imprisoned because of their activism.

The court heard that gallery staff were concerned that soup might have dripped through the protective glass and destroyed the painting.

I also learned that the damaged frame had been purchased by the gallery in 1999 and was valued at £28,000.

Sentencing the two women, Judge Christopher Hehir said the “cultural treasure” could have been “severely damaged or even destroyed”.

The judge, who previously jailed the co-founder of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion for five years, added: “The soup may have leaked 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 the sunflower,” he said.

Raj Chadha, defending Holland, said the women “checked” that the plate was protected by a glass cover before throwing away the soup.

The jury found the couple guilty of criminal damage after three hours of deliberations in July.

The judge told Plummer, who also sentenced him to a criminal behavior order: “Clearly you believe your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel like it, but you don’t.”

“My choice today is to accept whatever judgment I receive with a smile,” Plummer, who is representing herself, said at the hearing.

“It is not just about me or my defendants being judged today, but on the foundations of democracy itself.”

Plummer was also sentenced to three months in prison for her role in a slow-motion march that caused long storms in west London in November 2023, and in July, just five days after her guilty verdict, Plummer was arrested for spray-painting departure boards at Heathrow Airport. .

Van Gogh’s painting, painted in Arles in southern France in August 1888, shows 15 sunflowers standing in a yellow bowl on a yellow background.

This work was the second from the National Gallery to be selected as a target of protest action by the JSO in 2022.

Two backers attached themselves to John Constable’s The Hay Wain in July of that year.