Just Stop Oil Activists Sentenced for Attack on Van Gogh Painting

One morning in October 2022, Anna Holland and Phoebe Plummer, two young climate activists, walked into room 43 of the National Gallery in London, opened two tins of Heinz tomato soup and then threw the sloppy orange contents at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.”

The pair then glued themselves to the wall beneath the painting’s frame, before Plummer shouted, “What is worth more, art or life?”

On Friday, a British judge sentenced the pair, both members of the Just Stop Oil protest group, to lengthy prison terms for the protest, which he said was “criminally idiotic” and could have caused “irreversible damage” to the masterpiece.

Judge Christopher Hehir, sentenced Plummer, 23, to two years in prison for damaging the painting’s frame. Holland, 22, received 20 months in jail for the same offense. The court had found the pair guilty of the offenses in July.

During the sentencing hearing, Judge Hehir said that acidic soup had a “corrosive effect” on the painting’s 17th-century wood frame and had lowered the frame’s value by an estimated 10,000 pounds, or about $13,000. The painting — one of a series that van Gogh made between 1888 and 1889 — is one of the National Gallery’s most treasured paintings and currently a centerpiece of the museum’s 200th anniversary exhibition, “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers.”

The judge said the duo’s action came close to damaging the masterpiece — within “the thickness of a pane of glass.” He added that “stupidity like this” could lead museums to withdraw cultural treasures from public view, or force them to introduce onerous security measures that would deter visitors.