Courses available in 2025-2026

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The Essential School of Painting (ESOP) is an independent London-based art school offering courses for all levels, from beginner classes to postgraduate and professional programmes.

We offer a range of in-studio and online courses, including yearlong programmes taught once a week and ESOP’s renowned two-year Advanced Painting Course (2025–27), which provides each student with a dedicated full-time studio.

For more information about our courses and scholarship programmes, please click the relevant links below.

ESOP Advanced Painting Course 2025-2027

The ESOP Newman Young Artists Scholarships 2025-2027

ESOP yearlong courses 2025-2026

*Our 2 year Advanced Painting course offers 3 days of tutorials per week during term time with a studio space for each student 24/7

** Young artists aged between 20 and 30 years at the time of starting the course

About The Essential School Of Painting

The Essential School of Painting (ESOP) is an independent art school in London, built on our belief that painting is a living discipline, progressed through sustained practice. We are a place where painters teach painters, carrying a painter from first steps, through year-long courses, to our postgraduate two-year Advanced Painting Course. For over twenty years, painters of the first rank, Academicians and artists of international standing, have taught, exhibited and spoken in our studios. We openly welcome all to join our community. That welcome is encapsulated in our motto, Animus ad Creandum, the courage to create.