<P> Many vivid synthetic pigments became commercially available to artists for the first time during the 19th century . These included cobalt blue, viridian, cadmium yellow, and synthetic ultramarine blue, all of which were in use by the 1840s, before Impressionism . The Impressionists' manner of painting made bold use of these pigments, and of even newer colours such as cerulean blue, which became commercially available to artists in the 1860s . </P> <P> The Impressionists' progress toward a brighter style of painting was gradual . During the 1860s, Monet and Renoir sometimes painted on canvases prepared with the traditional red - brown or grey ground . By the 1870s, Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro usually chose to paint on grounds of a lighter grey or beige colour, which functioned as a middle tone in the finished painting . By the 1880s, some of the Impressionists had come to prefer white or slightly off - white grounds, and no longer allowed the ground colour a significant role in the finished painting . </P> <P> Prior to the Impressionists, other painters, notably such 17th - century Dutch painters as Jan Steen, had emphasized common subjects, but their methods of composition were traditional . They arranged their compositions so 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 inspired Impressionists to represent momentary action, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day - to - day lives of people . </P> <P> The development of Impressionism can be considered partly as a reaction by artists to the challenge presented by photography, which seemed to devalue the artist's skill in reproducing reality . Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography "produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably". </P>

In the 19th century in france what gave impressionist painters so much new subject matter