In 1881 he was living in Hampstead, which was developing rapidly on the edge of a large city and becoming a place where urban and rural, rich and poor, met. In this painting the modern city and its culture of consumerism and fashion is represented by the mother and child, whilst the countryside, with its cycle of labour and annual harvest, is suggested by the roadmenders and the flowerseller. The strong narrative element of the beautiful, wealthy widow going to put flowers on her dead husband’s grave has been subordinated to the artist’s close observation of social type. Appropriately, there is hope for the future in this splendidly observed urban landscape; the trees now in bud will come into leaf; the roadmenders will finish mending the road and life, in short, will go on. The picture is painted in a way clearly inspired by the 'plein-air' painting of the French Impressionists and by their compositional methods: the widow and her daughter are daringly cropped by the bottom edge of the canvas.