[1] The monumental canvas was first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants of 1906, where its cadmium colors and spatial distortions caused a public expression of protest and outrage.

Art historians James Cuno and Thomas Puttfarken have suggested that the inspiration for the work was Agostino Carracci's engraving of Reciproco Amore or Love in the Golden Age after the similarly named painting by the 16th-century Flemish painter Paolo Fiammingo.

[5][6][7] Though Matisse invokes the tradition of the pastoral landscape, his colors, forms, and figures refuse clear or simple meanings or associations.

"Pablo Picasso, who, in an effort to outdo Matisse in terms of shock value, immediately began work on his watershed Les Demoiselles D’Avignon," writes Martha Lucy, associate curator at the Barnes Foundation.

[11] Art critic Hilton Kramer wrote that Le bonheur de vivre was "the least familiar of modern masterpieces," because it was long held by the Barnes Foundation, which did not allow color reproductions for many years, while the museum itself was until 2012 located in suburban Merion, Pennsylvania.

University of Delaware Professor Robert L. Opila, in collaboration with Barbara Buckley, head of conservation at the Barnes, and Jennifer Mass, a senior scientist and head of the Scientific Research and Analysis Laboratory at Winterthur, studied the paint's material microstructure in an attempt to determine why the cadmium sulfide is changing color.