Impressionists emphasized a differing subject matter than the salon painters of the era. They were interested in the life of the everyday person not that of nobility or religion. In Degas painting above we see the foreground subject the horses and jockeys as well as a buggy (the importance of which will be discussed later). This nouveaux novelty of the Parisian high society was a subject that not only depicted modern society but also showed life in motion, a concept that artists in the impressionist movement tried to depict. Degas spent a lot of time making hundreds of sketches regarding how horses and jockeys moved both as individual units and together. Studying the individual muscles and how they react to various movement, Degas was able to create the most realistic depiction of the horses as they would have seen in real life. .
The strife towards photorealism due to the invention and increase in popularity of the camera is another point supporting why this painting can be classified as impressionistic. Degas and many of the impressionists took interest "with "instant," unposed photography" according to Eyewitness. "Blurring, unusual juxtapositions , and the accidental cropping off of figures in snapshots created the sense of movement and spontaneity that the Impressionist artists wanted to achieve. Degas was also inspired by the work of Edward Muybridge, whose freeze-frame photographs of humans and animals in motion had revolutionized the depiction of movement in art. We see a clear example of this cropping technique with the aforementioned carriage. In the front righthand corner of the picture, occupying a large quarter of the foreground, lies a carriage with passengers that is partially lost to the area outside the frame. The importance of the slight blurring around the wheels and the missing half of the carriage is that the viewer gets the idea that there is a motion depicting the exiting of the vehicle from the frame of reference.