I can manage very well with the first grubby backside [of the model] which comes along – provided I find a skin which takes the light well. - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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'. But I [Renoir] was very happy it wasn't too much of a flop: There is something of that admirable face in it'

They've found fault with me enough, in all conscience, for putting violet shadows on bodies.

What wonderful things [Renoir is reacting on Corot's painting 'Interior of Chartres Cathedral' and Delacroix's 'Interior of M. de Mornay’s house', – he saw in 1919 from his wheelchair, in the reopened painting-rooms of the Louvre]. There isn’t a single big picture worth any more than these two little ones.. .The Director [of the Louvre] was so charming to me. I wish I could have thanked him properly. If you meet him, tell him how much I enjoyed my visit. If I'd presented myself at the Louvre in my wheelchair thirty years ago, they'd have shot me out fast enough! You see, one has to live a long time to see such changes. I've been one of the lucky ones. [December 1919, Renoir died]