Van Gogh paintings targeted again after two activists are jailed for soup stunt

Another said: ‘We will be held accountable for our actions today, and we will face the full force of the law. When will the fossil fuel executives and the politicians they’ve bought be held accountable for the criminal damage that they are imposing on every living thing?’

Plummer and Holland were today jailed for carrying out a similar stunt in 2022, throwing two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work before kneeling down in front of the painting and glueing their hands to the wall beneath it.

Staff at the gallery inspected the painting and frame for damage while the women were still attached to the wall, and were worried the soup may have dripped through the protective glass.

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.

‘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 received a two year sentence and 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.’

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.

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

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

In 2022, Plummer said in front of the painting: ‘What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice?