The Impressionistic Novel

I used to baffle at the great amount of precise detail that would appear in the middle of Homer's sagas or Hugo's huge novels, details about each of the individual warriors of the Myceneans fighting against Illium, or about each skirmish in the Vendée in 1793. The level of detail seemed tedious and quite unnecessary to the plot.
Then I realised it would seem less incomprehensible if one considered the realist style of paintings popular from the Renaissance till the nineteenth century or so. They also exhibited a great variety and level of detail; this did not however hinder their existence as artworks, with a message and value which emerged out of, or existed alongside, all that detail. Similarly for the Odyssey, Illiad, Les Misérables, or even Georges Perec's La vie: mode de emploi; their message is carried alongside their wealth of detail.
Novels which do not have so much detail, on the other hand, are more like Impressionist works: they portray the scene in a more idiosyncratic way, playing with the light, highlighting certain details and eliding over others.