# Fisherman and a Couple in a Landscape [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [VELDE, Jan van de, II]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Etching, 81 x 163 mm ## Commentary Fisherman and a Couple in a Landscape c. 1627 Etching, 81 x 163 mm Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague There are a number of seventeenth-century Dutch prints in which couples are shown in the vicinity of fishermen. The captions invariably play on the suggestive connotation of fishing as seduction and intercourse. In the present print of this kind, a seemingly innocent riverside scene by Jan van de Velde, the accompanying verse reads: "In silence is it best to fish with rod and line; / The fish is surprised, deceived by the hook. / So is it with love; sooner than one might guess, / The skirt is in the net, caught by the angling of the trousers." ## Related artworks - [Haarlem printing press]() - [Landscape with Figures on a Road]() - [Petrus Scriverius]() - [Skaters on a River]() - [The Oostpoort \(East Gate\) at Delft]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()