The Impressionist movement marked a point in time where many deep rooted painting ideals were abandoned. The predominant emphasis prior to the Impressionist movement had been on academic painting that typically expressed a moral viewpoint. The moral narratives were rendered in very precise detail, requiring many hours of artistic input within the confines of a studio. The Tepidarium completed by Chasseriau is an example of the conventional style of painting. Impressionism changed all this. It declared morals in paintings to be irrelevant, yet at the same time it turned the actual practice of painting into a series of moral choices: the painter had to be completely true to his own feelings concerning the nature of art. "These artists were concerned more with immediate sensation and the uncensored truth of the eye, than moral fictions." Although this group primarily painted landscapes, they did not restrict themselves to landscapes. They focused on "capturing the effects of light and true color, whatever the genre." These artists emphasized the simple beauty of ordinary life for the common man and woman. Scientific discoveries and enquiry contemporary with the Impressionists influenced their use of particular painting techniques. The Impressionists exploited the advantages handed to them by science to capture the realism of atmospheric light in nature more effectively. Science enabled the use of lighter pigments, a different understanding of color, and vastly increased the convenience and portability of art supplies. New color theory concluded that all color was derived "from a few pure tones, which blended optically on the retina". "It became the ambition of the Impressionist group to demonstrate the truth of this contention by painting in small, pure touches that coalesced to create the required hue only when the spectator stood at a certain distance from the canvas." Black pigment was omitted from the Impressionist palette. To achieve a darker tone, different hues were combined as naturally occurs in nature. When contrasted with the traditional school of painting such as seen in Corots'The Bridge at Nantes, the Impressionist palette was much lighter. Notice the light palette used by Guy Rose in his painting Point Lobos. "In order to achieve a perfect reproduction of what the eye really perceived, the Impressionists believed that pictures were, as far as possible, to be created in the open air, in the very presence of what the artist was depicting." This is often referred to as painting en plein air. Since they were interested in capturing the true essence of a fleeting moment in time, they usually worked directly on primed canvases outdoors. This was a radical departure from the entrenched ritual of making several studies out of doors first prior to completing the final painting indoors in a studio.

Painting was spontaneous, joyful, and normally completed within a few hours. The artist had to be quick to capture the veracity of an atmospheric impression that could not be repeated. In this sense, Impressionism is considered highly realistic. Due to the constrained painting time, Impressionist brushwork is loosely and broadly applied. Notice the loose application of brushwork John Gamble has used in his painting Poppies and Lupines.

As Impressionism matured, the style began to depart more and more from realism. The emphasis became more on form, color and design than on truth to nature. This tendency can be seen in the broader patches of color and the emphasis on color rather than nature in this painting, In the Banner Valley, by Charles Reiffel.