Two Brighton students were due in court this morning (Wednesday 31 August) charged with causing criminal damage to the frame of John Constable’s masterpiece The Hay Wain.
The Just Stop Oil protesters glued themselves to the frame after attaching their own image of “an apocalyptic vision of the future” of the landscape, on three large sheets of paper.
It featured an old car dumped in front of the mill and the Hay Wain cart carrying an old washing machine.
Music student Eben Lazarus, 22, and psychology student Hannah Hunt, 23, were today due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
They struck at the National Gallery, in London, on Monday 4 July. Gallery staff evacuated art lovers, tourists and a class of 11-year-old children on a school trip from the room where the painting hangs as they waited for the police to arrive.
Lazarus and Hunt, wearing white t-shirts bearing the logo Just Stop Oil, stepped over a rope barrier before placing printed coloured paper on to the front of the painting.
Each also placed a hand on the frame of the painting and kneeled beneath it before loudly outlining their concerns as visitors were ushered out by security staff.
During the protest Lazarus, who described himself himself as an art lover, said: “Art is important. It should be held for future generations to see but when there is no food what use is art?
“When there is no water, what use is art? When billions of people are in pain and suffering, what use then is art?”
The Hay Wain, which was painted in 1821, is one of the most popular paintings at the gallery and shows a rural Suffolk scene of a wagon returning to the fields across a shallow ford for another load.
Hunt later said: “The disruption will end when the UK government makes a meaningful statement that it will end new oil and gas licences.”
She added: “I’m here because our government plans to license 40 new UK oil and gas projects in the next few years.
“This makes them complicit in pushing the world towards an unliveable climate and in the death of billions of people in the coming decades.
“You can forget our ‘green and pleasant land’ when further oil extraction will lead to widespread crop failures which means we will be fighting for food. Ultimately, new fossil fuels are a death project by our government.
“So, yes, there is glue on the frame of this painting but there is blood on the hands of our government.”
The National Gallery said: “The painting was removed from the wall to be examined by our conservation team.
“The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting – both of which have now been successfully dealt with.”
