Pyotr Ivanovich Shchukin was born in 1853, one of ten children[1] of Ivan Vassilievitch Shchukin, a self-made Moscow merchant in the textile trade from an Old Believer[2] background who acquired a wealth of 4 million gold rubles, and his wife Ekaterina Shchukin, the daughter of Pyotr Konovich Botkin, a tea merchant and patron of the arts.

[5][6] Shchukin built an important collection of Russian ancient art and artifacts and owned several impressionist masterpieces.

[1] His younger brother, Sergei Shchukin, was also a noted art collector[7] while his brother Dimitri Shchukin assembled "Moscow's best collection of Old Masters" that eventually entered the Pushkin Museum.

[1] He was a customer of French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel[1] and accompanied his brother Sergei on buying trips to Paris.

[8] When Shchukin was blackmailed by a former mistress and needed money to pay her off, he sold his Impressionist paintings to Sergei rather than sell them back to Durand-Ruel for less.