FRENCHVILLE, Maine — When she was a little girl, Joyce Nadeau Labbe remembers visiting a farmhouse for afternoon treats while her older siblings picked potatoes in the nearby fields.
Joyce and her husband, Vern Labbe, purchased that old farm in 1983 where they raised their two children and today welcome their own grandchildren for treats and family gatherings.
“I remember thinking it was like coming into a palace,” Labbe said recently. “Living here is a dream come true.”
The farmhouse, with tall, tin ceilings of a different pattern in each room, interior transom windows and detailed woodwork is remarkable on its own.
But what makes it truly remarkable is the series of murals covering every wall on the second floor, running down the staircase to the ground floor and continuing around the entry door and hallway.
The scenes show forests with some parts looking like the northern Maine woods and others like the swampy areas of low country Georgia.
Beginning at the top of the staircase and flowing down to the first floor is a massive waterfall tumbling over a gorge with a flock of geese flying overhead.
In the corner, two men float in a traditional St. John River bateaux near a bridge.
The murals were painted in the early 1930s by local artist Gilbert Roy, a commercial house and sign painter who dabbled in interior decoration, according to Fort Kent Historical Society President Chad Pelletier.
“These are amazing,” Pelletier said of the works after seeing them for the first time last week. “These are very different than the ones [Gilbert Roy] had in his house — those were of the four seasons.”
Pelletier has studied the works of Roy and last summer unveiled a display of the late painter’s works at the Fort Kent Historical Society during the 2015 World Acadian Congress.
Born in Quebec in 1879, Roy moved to Maine when he was 27-years-old and became well-known in the area for painting everything from business signs to theater scenery panels to portrait studies, Pelletier said.
“He was pretty much self-taught,” Pelletier said. “He had a cement wall down in his basement, and he’d go down there to paint on that wall over and over to practice.”
According to Pelletier, Roy didn’t paint from actual models or photographs. Instead, he pulled his subjects from his imagination, likely based on his love of travel magazines, such as National Geographic.
“As a young man, he had a neighbor who was sort of a mentor,” Pelletier said. “That man liked the old ‘Currier and Ives’ style calendars, and Gilbert was influenced by that style.”
But first and foremost, Pelletier said, Roy was a commercial painter who advertised himself as a decorator.
In the early 1930s, he was hired by Frenchville farmer Belone Roy (no relation) who had a very good year growing and selling potatoes — good enough to afford to spending some money sprucing up his house, Pelletier said.
No one really knows why the Roys opted for murals instead of paint or wallpaper.
“I can only guess that Gilbert convinced them to let him paint the mural,” Pelletier said. “We don’t know exactly how long it took him to complete the murals, but he must have been in their hair for a few weeks that fall.”
The murals were painted on beaverboard, the predecessor of drywall, in muted shades of greens, browns and orange.
Pelletier speculates they may have darkened over the years because of the previous owners of the house being smokers.
Several panels show some water damage, as well. For the past decade, Vernon Labbe has been painstakingly uncovering the first floor mural that was covered in wallpaper at some point.
“We always figured there was more to the mural coming down the stairs,” Vernon Labbe said. “It stopped suddenly at a section of [wall] molding, and we thought no way that waterfall would end like that.”
Using a putty knife, Vernon has carefully scraped away the old wallpaper and layers of glue to reveal the artwork hiding underneath.
“It’s a slow process,” he said. “It’s a lesson in patience.”
Areas of the mural have been damaged in the process, and the Labbes hope to someday entice Gilbert’s granddaughter, Sue Roy, an artist in her own right, to come and help with restoration efforts.
Joyce Labbe, who gently wipes the paintings down with a damp cloth at least one time per year, said the novelty of the murals has not worn off in the decades they have lived in the house.
“We moved in in October of 1982,” she said. “There are still days we say to each other, ‘Come up and look, we never noticed that before.’”
To have a work in its entirety such as the Roy mural is exceptional, according to Lise Pelletier, director of the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.
“It is extremely special,” she said. “I am so pleased Vern and Joyce have kept it. They are great people to recognize the cultural value of what they have and to preserve it.”
Roy did paint other murals around the area, Chad Pelletier said, though many, if not all, have been lost to renovations, damage or the ravages of time.
Several of his murals were on walls at a judge’s residence in Plaisted, a house in St. John Plantation, and the old Fort Kent Acadia Hotel, which burned down in 1945.
The mural in St. John, Pelletier said, included tropical scenes with tigers and lions, likely influenced by National Geographic magazine.
The Fort Kent Historical Society has dozens of his works, including a self-portrait and several panels of nudes.
“We don’t have many artists from that period who expressed themselves in canvas,” Lise Pelletier said. “A lot of artists worked in churches or in woodwork. For him to take his own visions and propel them into his work is wonderful.”
The Acadian Archives has a scenic theater backdrop painted by Roy in its collection, though Lise Pelletier said it is in a fragile state and not on display.
Chad Pelletier said he has spoken to other area residents who worked with Roy, including a 94-year-old woman who recalled him painting a sign on her father’s barn.
“She told me it took Gilbert half a day to paint that sign, and he charged $15,” Pelletier said. “She said her father found that rather expensive.”
For his part, Gilbert Roy apparently was rather frugal and not one to let resources go to waste.
“He once painted a portrait of the old Page House,” Chad Pelletier said. “And he used house paint he used to paint the actual house itself.”
He said he has no idea what kinds of paint were used on the Labbe mural.
For their part, the Labbes are content to enjoy the work of art in their home and have no plans to alter it in any way.
“I’m happy he chose to do woodland scenes for this one,” Vern Labbe, a forester with the Maine Department of Conservation, said. “I’m not sure I could have taken the lions and tigers.”
