TWO climate protesters who inflicted more than £1,000 of damage to a John Constable masterpiece have been convicted.
Hannah Hunt, 23, and Eben Lazarus, 22, taped printed posters of a “dystopian version” of the artwork onto the painting on July 4.
The Just Stop Oil activists then glued their hands to its frame in the National Gallery.
The Hay Wain, which was painted in 1821, depicts a scene in Flatford Mill of a wagon returning to the fields across a shallow ford for another load.
Hunt and Lazarus were each convicted by a district judge of causing criminal damage at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.
The pair entered the gallery in July with three others who distracted security officers so the defendants could tape three printed posters of a “dystopian version of Constable’s painting” onto the canvas.
Hunt and Lazarus then glued their hands to the frame before delivering a short speech to people in the gallery.
The painting was taken to be restored at the cost of £1,081 and fitted with a glass sheet before it was re-exhibited the next morning.
The pair argued that Articles 10 and 11 under the European Convention of Human Rights – the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly respectively – gave them lawful excuse for their actions, but this was rejected.
District Judge Daniel Sternberg said the damage caused was “significant not trivial” and that the defendants “were reckless” and caused it “without lawful excuse”.
He sentenced each of them with a conditional discharge for a period of 18 months and ordered they pay the National Gallery £540.74 each in compensation.
The judge added that if they committed any further offences within that time frame they were liable to have the matter “reopened” and the court could send them “to prison”.
Judge Sternberg also gave Hunt and Lazarus conditional discharges for gluing themselves to the forecourt of a service station on the M25 in Oxted, Surrey, on April 28, this year.
They both pleaded guilty to aggravated trespass in relation to that demonstration.
Hunt and Lazarus, both of High Street, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, denied but were convicted of causing criminal damage.
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