In 1851, the municipal council of Le Havre awarded Eugène Boudin a scholarship to study for three years in Paris. The young artist quickly enrolled as a student copyist at the Musée du Louvre. He openly drew inspiration from the still lifes of Chardin and began painting them himself in 1853.
 
Still Life with Squash, however, already demonstrates Boudin's extraordinary mastery of the genre, and his great boldness of detail, as evinced by the traces of irregular cut marks in the orangey flesh of the squash, and especially the bunch of leeks and the slab of yellow butter on a plate to the left. While the background is brought to life through his rapid and fluid strokes, the rich and colourful paint of the vegetables gives substance and luminosity to the still life. Boudin's catalogue of still lifes includes a significant number of compositions featuring fruit and vegetables, game and fish or shellfish, sometimes combined with crockery, but relatively fewer flowers.
 
Still Life with Peonies and Mock Orange differs from Flowers in a Glass by opting for a more natural and less classic composition: the flowers and leaves are freshly picked and simply laid on the table. There again, the neutral background done in energetic strokes especially highlights the impromptu bouquet.
 
While Boudin painted the majority of his still lifes between 1853 and 1865, he returned to the genre from time to time during the 1870–1880 period. These works, which he called "dining room paintings", enjoyed modest success with the collectors from Le Havre. Some were painted on commission, but most of his still lifes were exhibited and auctioned. Boudin was realistic and knew that he could stay afloat during difficult times by painting artworks easily sold to a bourgeois clientele. But far from being mere "bread-and-butter work", these still lifes show the young artist's true mastery of the genre and an originality that was already very modern.