Sometimes qualified, rightly or wrongly, as naïve art, raw art or popular art, the work of Arthur Villeneuve evolved on the fringes of the great movements that marked 20th century Quebec.

It was in 1946 that he made his first drawings in a school notebook. Eleven years later, he gave up his job and began to paint the entire interior walls, ceilings and facade of his house in the "Bassin", a popular district of Chicoutimi, an area of ​​some 510 square meters. Thus, for almost two years, he worked up to 100 hours a week on the development of colorful frescoes representing the history and attractions of his region, as well as fanciful subjects. In 1959, he began to welcome visitors to his home.

He was noticed by the painter Stanley Cosgrove, who introduced him to the general public. Because in addition to the house, which was the subject of a short film by the National Film Board of Canada in 1964, Villeneuve's prolific work consists of nearly 4,000 paintings and 2,000 drawings. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts devoted a retrospective to him in 1972. The same year, the artist received the Order of Canada. In 1994, four years after Villeneuve's death, the famous house was moved to the La Pulperie regional museum in Chicoutimi.