Painters and sculptors who see themselves as heirs to Freud and Moore should enter for the Threadneedle Prize, now upon us for the third year.

Threadneedle's aim is not to subvert the current orthodoxies of the Arts Council and the Tates but to offer an alternative that gives exclusive primacy to aspects of art largely neglected and ignored by these great engines of the state - that is to the realism and naturalism of the human or animal form and their environment, emotion and experience.

This is not another prize for abstract and conceptual art, but for art that has a subject of contemporary significance, ethical, aesthetic or political or, in simple terms, is based on observation and worth filtering through an artist's sensibility - think of Goya and Cézanne.

That the judges are the sculptor Michael Sandle, the National Gallery Curator Xavier Bray (The Sacred Made Real, the great exhibition of 17th-century painting and sculpture, his most recent achievement), and David Rayson, Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art, offers some clue to the nature of the work for which Threadneedle hopes.

Sculptors must register by Monday 17 May, painters by Tuesday 1 June. Either email threadneedleprize@mallgalleries.com, telephone 020 7930 6844, or write to Mall Galleries, 17 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5BD.