Environmental Activists Throw Soup On Van Gogh Painting

Supporters of Just Stop Oil have splashed soup on two Vincent van Gogh paintings, just hours after two activists received jail sentences for targeting one of the same artworks.

Three protesters threw orange soup at Sunflowers (1888) and Sunflowers (1889) during the Poets and Lovers exhibition at the National Gallery in central London. They have been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.

The latter painting was the same artwork targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. This duo is now part of a group of 25 Just Stop Oil supporters currently in jail for climate protests.

The National Gallery later reported that the two paintings targeted on Friday had been removed for examination and were luckily found to be undamaged.

“Future generations will see these prisoners of conscience as being on the right side of history,” Phil Green, one of the participants in Friday’s protest, told gallery visitors.

Former protestor Phoebe Plummer had just been sentenced to two years in prison for causing an estimated £10,000 of damage to the frame of Sunflowers 1888, just an hour before the act.

During sentencing at Southwark Crown Court on Friday, Judge Christopher Hehir told the two protestors, “You two had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers, and your arrogance in believing otherwise warrants the strongest condemnation.”

#MaltaDaily