Artist's views on poverty.

Some of the contributing factors of poverty are lack of education, family debts, and other problems with money. The artist portrays poverty negatively because the woman and child in the background look frail and sick. The flower girl looks more healthy because she can make money selling flowers, but the woman and child have nothing.
The Author's message about poverty is that it is worse than it seems. By showing the healthy flower girl in the foreground and the more sickly woman and child in the background, he is saying that poverty is worse than it seems to be. One element that supported this is space. The spaces of background and foreground were used to show the healthier flower girl as more visible than the woman and child.