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Ah, how long should a masterpiece take?
How long it takes you to paint any particular painting can vary greatly, depending on your style of painting.
If you paint in the classical style using a underpainting followed by many layers of color, then the very fact that oils take time to dry will add days to your process. If you are a wet-in-wet, or alla prima painter, then you actually try to finish a painting in one sitting. But of course, that does not count any preliminary sketches or reference gathering. And, of course, it also does not mean just because you try to finish in one sitting that you will. Even the great Sargent, as Marvin pointed out, had to paint areas over and over to get the effect he wanted, even though in looking at his work today, it looks as if he just laid down a single brush stroke and moved on.
Now I personally enjoy paintings of both styles and actually include some of both styles in my painting, as I start wet-in-wet, and may finish wet-on-dry. But I lean more toward a direct approach, and almost never do a monochromatic underpainting.
As for longevity of the piece of art based on how long it took to paint, I don't think there is any connection between the two. I could work for years on a failed painting and Richard Schmid could finish a masterpiece in one hour. I have a quote from an article about Richard Schmid. In this article he states, "I rarely go beyond three hours in painting a subject." Now the success of any painting like that style is not in how long it takes to paint that paintin, but in the hours of training that it took to be able to put down a stroke of paint so accurate in value, color and placement, that the first stoke is the final stroke needed to represent that area.
I personally like to use this analogy:
The advanced alla prima painter is like the advanced blues musician. For just as the blues artist strives to says more with a single note, the alla prima painter strives to says more with a single brush stroke. While to the uninitiated, blues music seems simple compared to classical music's complex arrangements, so does alla prima painting's loose brush work look simple compared to the more controlled and more tim-consuming classical style of painting. But anyone who has tried to play the blues can tell you there are years of practice behind that one note, and so it is with alla prima painting. There are many years of practice behind that one brush stroke. So I ask you this: is an alla prima painting worth less or does it have less an impact on the art world, just because it took hours instead of days to complete? Or does Muddy Water's "Mamie" have less feeling, or have less a lasting impact on the world of music because it uses a simple blues progression? After all it is not how long it took to create, but how well it speaks its meaning that matters.
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