Activists receive jail sentence for throwing soup on Van Gogh painting

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 in a bid to draw attention to the threat of climate change. 

During the protest Plummer was heard to say: “What is worth more, art or life?”

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.

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Staff at the gallery inspected the painting and frame for damage while the women were still attached to the wall. 

The painting itself was not found to be damaged in the incident.

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.

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.

Just Stop Oil activist Anna Holland arriving at Southwark Crown Court in London (Image: James Manning)

“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.”

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.”

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Judge Hehir said it was “offensive” for Plummer to portray herself as a political prisoner “when you think of the people in dungeons around the world.

“We don’t have political prisoners in this country,” he added.

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”.

Painted in Arles in the south of France in August 1888, van Gogh’s painting shows 15 sunflowers standing in a yellow pot against a yellow background.

Just Stop Oil activists hold up banners of those jailed for previous activism outside Southwark Crown Court (Image: James Manning)

The work was the second from the National Gallery to be selected as a target for protest action by Just Stop Oil in 2022.

Two other supporters glued themselves to John Constable’s The Hay Wain in July of that year.

In 2022, Plummer said in front of the painting: “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.