WorkDocs - The Muses (Patreon)

Maurice is a young painter with a small art gallery on the outskirts of Venice. During his free afternoons, he roams the city to capture the delightful environment with canvas, brushes, and paint. He’s greatly inspired by all the beautiful men roaming around in their elegant gondolas through the countless canals. They are his muses. And suddenly, on one sunny afternoon, these muses take him on a journey that he’ll never forget.

The city of Venice is the perfect décor for a story. Any story! The beauty of its unique architecture, its sumptuous art collections, and its setting in the lagoon is breathtaking and makes it irresistible for any traveler or artist. It remains one of the most enchanting and magical places, even with the mass tourism of today.

The Gondoliers

I had Venice on my projects list for a long time. Over the years I collected several very nice 3D models and the idea of a young painter obsessed with beautiful gondoliers came to me after reading the biography of John Singer Sargent ‘The Grand Affair’ by Paul Fisher. It gives a very interesting insight into the life of this talented and enigmatic artist and into the particularities of the late Victorian world.

Sargent visited Venice as a young artist when the so-called gondola mania was at its height. Traveling abroad was still mainly reserved for the well-off, but greater numbers of tourists and artists started flocking to the city. The Serenissima had much to offer, but many came for more than just a trip on a gondola. It was well-known at that time that beyond rowing, these boatmen had far more physical services to offer to female, and above all, male clients. Venice seems to have been something of a sanctuary for closeted gay men among the upper classes of Europe and the U.S. and gondoliers often served as muses for many hungry artists. Some even traveled and lived very openly with them, like English poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds with the divine gondolier Angelo Fusato, “an angel with blue eyes, raven hair and the wild glance of a Triton.”

The age of elegance

The characters and the stylish fashion for this project were inspired by the posh Edwardian era, so well portrayed in so many British novels and elegant costume dramas. Hence the main character's name and no wonder that most of the men in the series look like Oxonian snobs.

The lady in the garden was inspired by a famous work by Vittorio Matteo Corcos, called ‘Dream’, and I tried to convey something of that ‘fin de siècle’ atmosphere so elegantly portrayed by Henri Gervex in ‘Une soirée au Pré Catelan’ The restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne still exists and not much has changed since; a simple lunch still costs a fortune, and dinner remains far beyond nearly anyone's budget.

Bathing beauty

The bathers were mainly inspired by the works of Ludwig von Hofmann. While searching for suitable images of male bathers in art, I found so many beautiful paintings that I created a whole gallery for them at the end of the series. (If you’re interested, you can find the entire collection in the zip file ‘Paintings’ at the bottom of this post.)

Some Models and Render Tests

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. It was a slow and elaborate project, but I very much enjoyed every minute of it. I want to thank you all for your very kind feedback and your most generous support!

Related sections of this project:

• Wallpaper
• WorkDoc
• Gallery
• AddOns

Back to Homepage or Index Page