JUST Stop Oil vandals threw soup over two Van Gogh paintings at the National Gallery after fellow activists were jailed for the same stunt.
Three eco-idiots targeted the masterpiece displayed in the ‘Poets and Lovers’ exhibition in London today.
Three eco-idiots protested in front of the masterpiece[/caption]
They chucked soup over the priceless artwork[/caption]
The paintings were covered just hours after fellow vandals Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were sentenced for the same offence.
Plummer, 23, was handed two years in prison for causing an estimated £10,000-worth of damage to the artwork’s frame at the National Gallery in London in 2022.
Meanwhile Holland, 22, was given 20 months for the same offence.
The protesters, wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts, chucked two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work in October two years ago.
They sat in front of the artwork and glued their hands to the wall beneath it
The frame was purchased by the gallery in 1999, the court heard, and was valued at £28,000.
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.
“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.”
Judge Hehir added how it was “offensive” for Plummer to say she was a political prisoner “when you think of the people in dungeons around the world”.
Plummer was also handed a three-month sentence for her involvement in a slow march which caused travel chaos 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 earlier this year.
And, just five days after her guilty verdict, Plummer was arrested for spraying paint on departure boards at Heathrow Airport.
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.
Soup was thrown over the painting[/caption]
The vandals sat in front of the Van Gogh painting in protest[/caption]
