Some of this is true, but this is a painting of the richest area of the wealthiest empire the world had yet seen.

But look at the flower-seller girl huddled against the wall. She’s wearing (for the time) commoner clothes and would’ve been desperately poor. She’s not from that area. She doesn’t belong there and is only tolerated because she has something people want. There were far more of her in the UK at the time — and in the world — than there were the wealthy people depicted in the painting. And most of them lived in tenements and tiny boardinghouse rooms. Or worse.

None of those uninsulated tenement houses were attractive. And none of them survived.

Here’s the reality, from about 1901 in London: