Artist, museum return

One of the treasures of Paris’ Modern Art Museum is a Pierre Bonnard painting of his wife in the bath, her ageless body lapped by pale blue bathwater. The museum is celebrating its reopening with an exhibition to complement that masterpiece.

Museums from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Pittsburgh have loaned works for “Pierre Bonnard: The Artwork, a Stopping of Time,” the first major exhibition of the painter’s works in Paris in 22 years.

The exhibition, which opened Thursday, includes more than a dozen of the French painter’s canvases depicting his bathing wife -- who appears eternally young, even when she was an ailing 70-year-old woman.

The Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris -- an austere 1930s building lined with columns and perched on the banks of the Seine -- has been closed for more than two years as workers brought it up to fire-safety standards. Most of the $18-million overhaul was behind the scenes.

Bonnard (1867-1947) seemed an obvious choice for the reopening, said Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who called the artist “a true precursor to modernity.”

The exhibition, which closes May 7, spans Bonnard’s career and includes 90 paintings.