>>5700255No, I think you are too concerned with convenient labels for ephemeral movements and not in essence. While I hate the term Realism and Realist, my point is that there are far more essential traits that are shared between Impressionists and the so-called Realists than between Realism and others that might fall under the vague term "realism," a term that only existed to label a wide range of styles informed by a wide range of principles after certain types of abstraction became the normal, and is based on these people's own shallow and limited perception. Doing plein air more often is not an essential trait, neither is doing landscapes of them more often. Especially when the earlier Impressionists did paintings of social gatherings, city life, domestic scenes, and other scenes of contemporary life that are essentially Realists and still without the characteristic painting technique of short strokes. If anything certain developments by Impressionists in light and composition have made them more able to depict the fleetingness that Realism set out to do. Not only were they influenced by Realists. They were Realists with some surface changes in their paintings who did plein air landscapes more often (depending on the artist) and they thought it warranted them to claim a label. It's easy for plein air, and landscapes, still lives, and portraits done in the "Impressionist" technique to be the representatives. For one because the scenes of Impressionism (historical movement) are necessarily tied to its own contemporary society and therefore unbecoming to be painted now, and because painters are more often than not limited by their own inadequacies to paint nothing much more complicated than plein air.
