Two climate protesters received prison sentences of over two years each for throwing soup at a Van Gogh painting.

The same judge had given suspended sentences to violent criminals, r*pists, and pedophiles, say critics.

Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to two years and 20 months respectively for their October 2022 protest at London's National Gallery.

They had thrown two tins of soup at Van Gogh's 1888 Sunflowers painting, glued themselves to the wall, and asked the crowd whether they were more concerned by the protest or climate change.

The Damage and Global Response

The action caused £10,000 worth of damage to the picture's frame and attracted worldwide censure.

It also inspired several subsequent activists to throw food products at other paintings around the world.

The protesters had been motivated by decreasing media coverage of Just Stop Oil's activism and selected that specific painting due to its vulnerability.

Artists Rally Against Prison Sentences

More than 100 artists, curators and academics signed an open letter coordinated by Greenpeace and Liberate Tate asking Judge Hehir not to sentence the protesters to prison.

George Monbiot criticized the sentences, pointing out that Hehir had given suspended sentences to violent criminals, r*pists, and pedophiles, as well as to Huw Edwards and racist protesters from the 2024 UK riots.

Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova argued that Van Gogh would have approved of the protest since nature was his muse.

The Cycle Continues

Just hours after the sentencing news broke, three activists entered the National Gallery's "Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers" exhibition and threw Heinz vegetable soup over two Sunflowers paintings.

One was the same work that Plummer and Holland had previously targeted.

In her July interview with The Times, Plummer said she felt "empowered" by the soup throwing incident, describing it as "seizing back power from the systems that are hell-bent on destroying us and destroying everything we know and love."

In January, Plummer, Holland, and twelve other Just Stop Oil protesters challenged their sentence lengths at the Court of Appeal, supported by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Emmeline Pankhurst's great-granddaughter.