Two activists from the Just Stop Oil campaign group who hurled tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting (1888) at London’s National Gallery in October 2022, have been sentenced to prison.
Today (27 September) at Southwark crown court in London, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Phoebe Plummer to two years and three months in prison and jailed Anna Holland for 20 months, saying they “couldn’t have cared less” if the painting had been damaged.
“Soup might have seeped through the glass,” he added, saying: “You had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers.”
In July of this year the two environmental activists were found guilty of criminal damage after splattering one of the most famous paintings in the world. Kneeling in front of the painting at the time of the incident, Plummer said: “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.”
A spokesperson for the National Gallery said at the time that there was some minor damage to the frame but the painting was unharmed.
Meanwhile more than 100 artists, curators and art historians—including Fiona Banner, and Peter Kennard—made a plea for both women to be spared a jail sentence in a protest letter organised by Greenpeace UK and Liberate Tate.
The letter says: “Crucially, Plummer and Holland knew the painting was protected from the soup by a solid pane of glass when they threw the red-orange missive, making a Pollock-esque splatter across the mustard yellow, drooping blooms. Their iconoclasm was temporary, a sight to behold to make their protest.
“As artists, art workers and art historians, we are concerned by the courts’ defence of a false notion of artistic purity in their judgement and sentencing. Art can be and frequently is, iconoclasm. These activists should not receive custodial sentences for an act that connects entirely to the artistic canon.”
Just Stop Oil are funded by the Climate Emergency Fund, a Los Angeles-based organisation founded in 2019.
In March of this year, three Belgian climate activists who were previously sentenced to prison for targeting Johannes Vermeer’s painting Girl with a Pearl Earring in October 2022 at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, won a court appeal. The demonstrators were subsequently told they will no longer face any punishment for their actions.