Just Stop Oil protesters jailed for throwing soup at van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’

LONDON — Two Just Stop Oil climate protesters who threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” were sentenced to prison Friday, the latest in a series of hefty punishments for activists in the U.K.

On October 14, 2022, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw two cans of Heinz tomato soup over the masterpiece in the National Gallery in London.

Plummer, who faces several other criminal cases for protest actions, was given two years behind bars. Holland was handed 20 months.

The painting itself was unharmed, but the 17th-century frame sustained some damage after the soup acted as paint stripper on the delicate surface. The frame was retouched and the painting was returned to display the same day.

In July, a jury found Plummer, 23, and Holland, 22, guilty of criminal damage to the frame.

At the sentencing, Judge Christopher Hehir said the sentences were exacerbated by the damage that they might have caused to a painting deemed to be priceless.

“The action you took was extreme, disproportionate and criminally idiotic,” said Hehir. “You came within the width of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or destroying the painting.”

Holland’s barrister Raj Chada said that if possible harm to the painting was considered in the sentencing, the pair should have been charged for that.

“It’s an outrageous sentence for a crime that they didn’t actually commit,” said Chada. “We will be considering an appeal.”

The soup protest caused widespread outrage and grabbed global attention. Footage of the soup splattering across the painting was viewed tens of millions of times. Holland and Plummer said they were motivated by their fears about the climate crisis.

“I tried to peacefully disrupt a business-as-usual system that is unjust, dishonest and murderous,” Plummer said in court Friday.

On Thursday, more than 100 artists, curators and art historians wrote to the judge pleading for clemency.

“Art can be and frequently is, iconoclasm. These activists should not receive custodial sentences for an act that connects entirely to the artistic canon,” they said in a letter.

Just Stop Oil, an environmental activist group that started less than three years ago, has made highly controversial and disruptive protests.

The former Conservative U.K. government responded to Just Stop Oil and other groups by introducing protest laws, which human-rights experts say are draconian and limit the right to protest.

In July, Hehir handed down sentences of four and five years to a group of Just Stop Oil protesters for planning an action that led to major disruption on the M25, Britain’s busiest road. There are now 26 Just Stop Oil activists in prison, according to the group.

Plummer said in remarks directed at Hehir: “If you think that taking an authoritarian approach today will somehow stop people standing up for justice, I believe you will be proved wrong.”

Plummer was also sentenced to three further months for another offense in November 2023 for slow walking on a London street, blocking traffic. Two other Just Stop Oil activists, Chiara Sarti and Daniel Hall, were given non-custodial sentences for the same protest.