Pablo Picasso “detested” Pierre Bonnard, says Guy Cogeval, president of Paris’s Musée d’Orsay. It’s easy to see why. In the early 20th century, Picasso and members of experimental groups such as the cubists and the futurists were finding shocking new ways to render the world. They tended to view a decorative-minded painter like Bonnard as a lightweight.

Meanwhile, conservative critics and collectors lionized his work as an alternative to the demands of modernism.

Pejorative labels like “decorative” began to stick, and by midcentury, Bonnard was in need of rehabilitation. Over the last few decades, a number of exhibitions have brought new attention to Bonnard (1867–1947) by emphasizing his vivid colors and subtle compositions. His rediscovery will culminate this spring with a Paris exhibition that organizers say is the first to look at the whole of his career.