Which composers’ music did Richard Wagner study most closely as a young composer?

As a young composer, Richard Wagner’s primary musical education came from his own close personal study of the scores of the masters, most notably the symphonies and string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven.1

While Wagner briefly acquired a groundwork in composition from Theodor Weinlig, the cantor of the Thomasschule, he was famously impatient with academic techniques and relied heavily on this independent study to develop his mastery of large-scale construction.1