TWO Bradford Just Stop Oil activists have claimed responsibility for a soup attack on Van Gogh masterpieces.

The pair were amongst three who entered the Van Gogh ‘Poets and Lovers’ exhibition at the National Gallery in London today and proceeded to throw Heinz vegetable soup over two of the iconic paintings. 

They said it was a "sign of defiance" after two fellow Just Stop Oil activists were jailed for pouring soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after they came close to “destroying” the masterpiece.

Phoebe Plummer 23, and Anna Holland, 22, caused as much as £10,000 worth of damage to the artwork’s gold-coloured frame when they targeted it at London’s National Gallery.

Plummer received a two-year jail term, while Holland was handed 20 months.

The protesters, wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts, threw two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work in October 2022, before kneeling down in front of the painting and gluing 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.

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.”

Footage of the latest incident shows art lovers gasping in shock as the soup attack unfolds in front of their eyes.

Mollie Somerville, 77, a retired teacher from Manningham, and Ludi Simpson, 71, a retired planner from Shipley, were arrested at the scene.

Ms Somerville said: “I am more and more frightened that we’re running out of time to save humanity from extinction.

"We desperately need an international Fossil Fuel Treaty to prevent this from happening in the lifetime of my grandchildren. 

"Harvey, aged eight, told me his plans for when he grows up. ‘I’d like to write musicals,’ he said,  ‘but with climate change, I might be dead."

Before he was arrested, Mr Simpson said: “My action is from the heart and the head. I know politicians can do the right thing if they listen to the facts, but their inaction is burning up our lives. Is it too much to ask for a safe future?

"Soup on sunflowers is a splash of protest. The treasured pictures remain unharmed."