“He [ Richard Wagner ] was very happy but very nervous [Renoir proposed him to paint his portrait]... In short, I think I spent my time well, thirty five minutes is not long, but if I had stopped sooner it would have been better, because my model [Wagner] ended up by losing some of his good humor, and he became stiff. I followed these changes too closely [in the portrait]... At the end Wagner asked to see it. He said 'Ah! Ah! It's true that I look like a Protestant minister.”

— Pierre-Auguste Renoir

But I [Renoir] was very happy it wasn't too much of a flop: There is something of that admirable face in it'
Quote of Renoir, in his letter to a friend, 15 Jan. 1882; as cited in 'Pierre Auguste Renoir - Richard Wagner', text of museum D'Orsay http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/richard-wagner-11042.html?no_cache=1
At the beginning of 1882, Renoir was travelling in the south of Italy and visited Palermo where Wagner was staying. Renoir proposed a short sitting for the following day and Wagner agreed; he had just finished his 'Parsifal'.
1880's

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir 44

French painter and sculptor 1841–1919

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“I did not care for Wagner. My tastes are more classical. Der Fuhrer had no musical taste and liked Wagner because of the bombastic Teutonic glories.”

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Casey Stengel (1890–1975) American baseball player and coach

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Albert Finney (1936–2019) English actor

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“Wagner exploited all forms of expression at a composer's disposal -- harmony, dynamics, orchestration -- to the extreme. His music is highly emotional, and at the same time Wagner has extraordinary control over the effect he achieves. That's why there is also something manipulative about Wagner's music, which is not to say that it's not honest. In fact, I believe that it's totally honest, but it also happens to be manipulative.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

SPIEGEL Interview with Daniel Barenboim

“One Sunday, Diego came to the house to see my paintings and critiqued all of them in a very clear manner, and he told me all the possibilities he saw in them. Then I painted two or three things, which are around the house, that to me seem very influenced by him [circa 1928]. They are portraits of thirteen- or fourteen-year-old kids... In 1929, I joined the Communist Party, I got married to Diego, and I had my first abortion. In that year I painted a portrait of Cristina Moya.... and other drawings that Morillo Safa [her main patron] owns. The unfinished [self-]portrait of my first abortion was my first Surrealist painting ['Frida and the Caesarean', she painted in 1929] but not completely. I have it [at home].”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

1950
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“It is difficult composing endings. Beethoven and Wagner could do it. Only great composers can do it. I can do it too.”

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Other sources

“They loved him, I think, because, with all his merits, he showed them to be rich: looking at his portraits, they understood at last how rich they really were.”

Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969) British baronet

Left Hand, Right Hand!, Bk. II, ch. 6.
Of the portrait-painter John Singer Sargent's relationship with his clients.

“My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches [things] I had done…and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

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“Jongkind.... his painting was too new and far too artistic to be appreciated in 1862 at his prices. Moreover, no one was as bad at making himself valued, as he was. He was a straight-forward and simple kind of man, who could hardly speak bad French and was very shy. But he was very outgoing that day. He asked to see my sketches, invited me to come and work with him, explained the whys and wherefores underlining his work and thereby, completed the training that I had already received from Boudin. He became from this moment my true master and it [is] to him, that I owe the definitive training of my eyes.”

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Quote from Claude Monet par lui-meme – interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in Le Temps newspaper, 26 November 1900
about Johan Jongkind, famous pre-impressionist landscape-painter of Dutch origin, painting then in Honfleur for some years and advising Monet then.
1900 - 1920

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