Mr. Lazarus, a 22-year-old music student, said before his arrest that he was a “Hay Wain who demonstrates our path to disaster.”
He took part in the protest alongside Mrs Hunt, 23, a psychology student who helped found Just Stop Oil after orchestrating protests for Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.
She issued a statement saying, “You can forget about our ‘green and pleasant land’ when the extra extraction of oil will lead to widespread crop failures, which means we will struggle to eat. In short, the new fossil fuels are a death project of our government “.
The group said it had gone to the National Gallery because “it had no choice but to continue addressing major cultural events and places in order to draw attention to the greatest crime against humanity.”
The value of The Hay Wain is unclear, but the record price of a Constable at auction was £ 22.5 million for The Lock in 2012.
It is the latest demonstration by Just Stop Oil, which last week allegedly targeted a Scottish art gallery and stormed the British Grand Prix on Sunday.
Five men, aged 21 to 46, and two women, aged 20 to 44, were arrested after a track invasion on the first lap of the race at Silverstone.
The incident was not shown on the global F1 television channel, but images of eyewitness accounts of five people emerged, who are understood to represent Just Stop Oil, entering the Wellington Strait circuit. Then they sat on the asphalt.
Five members of Just Stop Oil are also said to have joined My Heart’s In The Highlands, a 19th-century landscape by Horatio McCulloch at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.
They are also supposed to have sprayed the group logo on the walls and floor of the gallery with orange paint.