I’m happy to help. In order to understand why D is incorrect, let’s home in on what the question stem is asking. We are looking for an answer for which it can be inferred from the passage that the author would agree with, specifically regarding changes in painting since the nineteenth century.
The discussion about painting in the nineteenth century begins around line 40 of the passage, so let’s start there. We learn that the advent of the camera and snapshot encouraged a new appreciation for the chance view; that Impressionist artists were inspired to paint “moments†of a movement; and that photography freed artists from static portraits and inspired them to capture random qualities of our world. We also learn that since photography preempted paintings as the means of obtaining portraits, painters had more freedom to vary subject matter, thus giving rise to abstract creations characteristic of modern art.
Answer E sums up a bunch of that: that once painters painted fewer conventional portraits, they could move beyond the literal depiction of objects. That is almost line for line what we just described.
So why (finally!) is answer D wrong? Well, what is D saying? “Once painters were less limited to the Impressionist style, they were able to experiment with a variety of styles of abstract art.â€
This is a tricky one, and really just comes down to being very picky about what the passage did and did not say. First, we learned about Impressionist “artists†like Degas, and not Impressionist style. That is to say, why isn’t it consistent with the passage that Degas and other Impressionist artists painting “moments†of a movement were still painting in an Impressionist style? So we don’t really know if the shift meant that painters were less limited!
As for the second part of the answer, we don’t really learn that these painters “were able to experiment with a variety of styles of abstract art†— at most, we learn that they had freedom to vary their subject matter, which gave RISE to abstract creations “characteristic†of modern art. That is a much more narrow claim!
I hope that helps see why E is right and D is incorrect. Notice that the test-writers try to suck you in to the wrong answer by using words that appear in the passage — Impressionist, abstract — but the answer isn’t actually saying something about those words that the author would agree with.
