Climate activists received prison time on Friday for throwing soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting.
In October 2022, British activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw two cans of tomato soup over Van Gogh’s iconic 1888 painting on display at London’s National Gallery. Wearing T-shirts supporting the environmental group Just Stop Oil, the two knelt before the painting after throwing soup on it and glued their hands to the wall beneath it.
On Friday, Plummer, 23, received two years in prison and Holland, 22, got 20 months after the two had been convicted of criminal damage.
United Kingdom-based Just Stop Oil describes itself as a nonviolent civil resistance group. It has demanded that the British Government stop the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. Some Just Stop Oil supporters gathered outside the court on Friday in solidarity.
The group has been behind multiple high-profile stunts over the past few years, including when two Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to John Constable’s 1821 painting The Hay Wain at the National Gallery in July 2022.
Just Stop Oil climate activists Anna Holland (L) and Phoebe Plummer pose next to “Mona Lisa” by Harley Weir in London on June 2, 2023. Holland and Plummer received prison time on Friday for throwing soup at a Van Gogh painting in 2022.
Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images
Judge Christopher Hehir said at their sentencing hearing that Van Gogh’s painting could have been “seriously damaged or even destroyed.”
While the artwork, which the Dutch painter created in Arles in the south of France, was not damaged in the attack because it was protected by glass, museum staff had worried the soup could have dripped through the protective barrier.
Holland’s lawyer, Raj Chada, said the activists checked that the painting was protected by glass before throwing the soup.
Meanwhile, the painting’s gold-colored frame suffered 10,000 pounds (roughly $13,000) worth of damage.
“You clearly think your beliefs give you the right to commit crimes when you feel like it,” Judge Hehir told Plummer on Friday. “You do not.”
Plummer said at the hearing that she would accept “with a smile” whatever punishment was handed down to her.
“It is not just myself being sentenced today, or my co-defendants, but the foundations of democracy itself,” she said.
Five days after Plummer was convicted, she was arrested for spraying paint on departure boards at Heathrow Airport.
Hehir also oversaw the case against Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Just Stop Oil and another environmental group called Extinction Rebellion. Hallam was found guilty of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in relation to a protest that disrupted a major London highway in November 2022. The judge gave Hallam five years in prison.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
