Is this really Impressionism?

Paul Smith’s “Impressionism Beneath the Surface” offers the method and thought behind impressionist work and artists. Monet’s Impression, Sunrise became the painting that Impression got its name as well as its characteristics. Impression came from the artists: Monet, Cezanne, Pissaro, Renoir, Sisley and Bazille; they came together to oppose the classical, conservative landscape images. Just like other art movements (revolutions) Impressionism came as a challenge to the current, successful form of artwork at the time. Although Impressionists are grouped together, Smith offers a different grouping of these artists “such as their choice of scenes of modern life or of atmospheric effects on landscape and cityscape for subject matter; their practice of plein-air painting… a “sketchy” matter; or their gender” (92).
When looking at the Impressionist paintings there appears a sense of urgency, this is because the Impressionists wanted to paint “the initial impression a scene made on the mind” (96). The paintings had a degree of sketchiness or patchiness. But Smith brings up that gender played a role within Impressionism especially in the subject matter. Males were free to paint what they chose but females subjects came mostly from the domestic sphere. There still seems to be criticism over the look and attitude that women and men have in the paintings and what these looks represent. But a main feature of Impressionism was the painting of landscapes and nature, by actually looking at it while painting it. Impressionists tried to capture the sensations that their eyes saw and the artist felt. This meant suspending knowledge of what objects were and looking at them as shapes and colors, making the paints a true impression and not a projection of what they see. Of course this is very difficult to do when we have been taught to recognize objects by their features and uses. And although Impressionism is supposed to look “spontaneous”, Smith states that this spontaneous look came through careful calculation. This only threw me off, especially when Smith had been saying Impressionism was one thing only to say that it really was not. This only adds to my idea that art is so much more confusing and open to interpretation than I first believed. Just when I thought I understood Impressionism there is another curve thrown at me; making me believe that audiences and critics always want to categorize artwork with similar characteristics, making no artwork truly free to stand alone.
By 1901 Monet states that a true impression would have only been a sketch. This statement, to me, makes it seem that artwork that is labeled “Impressionism” in reality is not Impressionism according to Monet. And perhaps we have to change our need to categorize and calculate artwork. (Which by no means is an easy thing to do.)