A startling form of photo-realism links the four paintings on the shortlist for this year’s BP Portrait Award announced yesterday as each of the nominated artists appears to have eliminated the brushstroke from their work.

The self-taught David Lawton, 48, who works at night for a charity and paints by day, is nominated for Stephen, a portrait of his friend Stephen Player. He is joined on the list by the Czech artist Hynek Martinec’s Zuzana in Paris Studio, a large portrait of his girlfriend captured in microscopic close-up, complete with sunglasses.

Johan Andersson, 20, a Swedish-born student at Central St Martin’s Art and Design College, was picked for Tama-ra, an oil-on-canvas of a friend in which he sought to challenge “attitudes to voyeurism”.

Paul Emsley, 59, who has exhibited widely and won several prizes, was nominated for Michael Simpson, a powerful image of the 67-year-old artist.

But is this kind of photo-realism the new fad in painting? Look at the work of these artists and you may well assume so, but does this mean that traditional painting is dead?

As one of the judges on this year’s award panel I would have to insist that this is not the case. These sorts of prizes are not particularly sensitive as monitors of trends.

Prizes should not be interpreted as true assessments of talent. How could they be? Though a portrait is simpler to assess in that, at the very least, a picture should look like its subject, there is no way of knowing in this show (except in the few cases when the sitter is famous) if the painter has actually created a good likeness.

This can catch you out. A couple of years ago, wandering round the BP private view, I selected the portrait I found most appealing. Half an hour later I was introduced to the painter. It was a self-portrait, the artist informed me – which was unfortunate because I would never have guessed.

No wonder so many painters prefer to leave such competitions to pots of marmalade at the village fête. Those that enter are part of a cultural scrum – and more so than ever this year in which the award was open to all comers.

More than 2,000 works by people of all ages, in a striking range of sizes and styles and techniques, passed in solemn (and sometimes not quite so solemn) succession across the gaze of the judges. This is not how paintings are meant to be seen. There was no time for the long perusal, the contemplative appraisal that a picture demands.

And perhaps that, in part, is why so often this prize seems dominated by the familiar or easily recognisable. In the past it has seemed almost colonised by Lucian Freud clones or haunted by students of Coldstream. This year the magazine photograph seems to have won through.

The judging panel is a motley crew. They ranged from artist to critic, from portrait gallery insider to supermodel outsider. They had pretty various tastes. Often these clashed. That is why the pictures that eventually get shortlisted are often compromise choices – the ones upon which everyone can agree are visually strong and technically accomplished.

That doesn’t mean they were the favourites. The picture that I wanted to win first prize didn’t even make the shortlist. And that is why the National Portrait Gallery is always keen for the public to come along and cast their own votes.

As well as the £25,000 prize money, the winner will be awarded a £4,000 contract to paint a portrait for the gallery. The winner will be announced at a ceremony on June 20.

Centuries of change

— 15th century Jan van Eyck holds up a looking glass to the face in what must have seemed almost like an illusion

— 16th century Renaissance masters lend the human image a muscular reality and sensuous feel of fresh life

— 17th century Rembrandt takes a long analytical look at his own face and examines psychological truths

— 18th century Ingres captures all the polished perfection of the neoclassical ideal

— 19th century Goya is unafraid to expose the ugly

— 20th century Picasso shatters subject into Cubist fragments

Source: Times database

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