This looks like a romantic scene. But Emerson used it in his book Life And Landscape on the Norfolk Broads , which mostly depicts locals at work. This picture is no different. The clue is in the bow-net, which lies behind the oarsman. The bow-net was used to catch tench, and the bait placed in the net was white or yellow lilies. The woman was gathering flowers as bait. The pair were not relaxing but working.

Emerson sold this image by itself as a photogravure, in May 1886, months before it appeared in his book Life and Landscape . As a single image, this picture is not clearly about work. Even in the book, Emerson did not say what work is happening and wrote only about the symbolism of water lilies. In a different section of the book his collaborator, T. F. Goodall, wrote about bow-nets and lilies as bait for fish.