activists Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, have been jailed at Southwark Crown Court for two years and 20 months respectively after they poured soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery in 2022.
Sentencing the eco-activists, Judge Christopher Hehir said the painting could have been “seriously damaged or even destroyed”.
He 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.”
Plummer also received a three-month jail term for her part in a slow march which caused long tailbacks in west London in November 2023.
Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in front of the Van Gogh in 2022 (Image: Getty)
People outside Southwark Crown Court, south London, in support of Anna Holland and Phoebe Plummer (Image: PA)
Plummer and Holland 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.
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 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.
The eco-loons cover the painting in soup (Image: Getty)