Patterned after elements in landscapes by Peter Paul Rubens, the present painting gives currency to Delacroix's recommendation to Manet: Look at Rubens, draw inspiration from Rubens, copy Rubens. Rubens was God. Manet and his future wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, are the couple at lower right dressed in seventeenth-century costume and posed like Rubens and his wife in the Flemish painter's?Park of the Chateau de Steen?(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). As Manet had concealed his relationship with Suzanne from his father, who died in September 1862, it is likely that?Fishing-a variation on a wedding portrait-was made between then and their marriage in October 1863.