Prior to the Impressionists, other painters, notably such 17th-century Dutch painters as Jan Steen, had focused on common subjects, but their approaches to composition were traditional.
They arranged their compositions in such a way that the main subject commanded the viewer's attention.
The Impressionists relaxed the boundary between subject and background so that the effect of an Impressionist painting often resembles a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance.
Photography was gaining popularity, and as cameras became more portable, photographs became more candid.
Photography stimulated Impressionists to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people.
The rise of the impressionist movement can be seen in part as a reaction by artists to the newly established medium of photography.
In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of artistic expression, and rather than competing with photography to emulate reality, artists focused on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph – by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated".
This allowed artists to subjectively describe what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience".
Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like color, which photography then lacked; "the Impressionists were the first to knowingly offer a subjective alternative to the photograph.
Another major influence was Japanese art prints which had originally come into France as wrapping paper for imported goods.
The art of these prints contributed significantly to the "snapshot" angles and unconventional compositions which would become characteristic of the movement.
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