Born and trained in Montpellier, Vien moved to Paris in 1740 where he quickly achieved success, largely with the support of Natoire and Boucher. Vien won the Grand Prix in 1743 which allowed him to study in Rome until 1750. He entered the Academy in 1754. In 1775 he became director of the French academy in Rome and served as first painter to Louis XVI for less than a year in 1789.
In the 1750s, Vien abandoned the Rococo style of Boucher and Natoire in favor of a Neoclassical mode. Besides taking up ancient or "Greek" subjects, his brushwork became smoother and harder, his palette increasingly cooler. Vien is considered on of the earliest Neo-classical painters and in that sense his career parallels that of Benjamin West in Britain. Vien's Neo-classicism was of supreme importance to the formation of the art of Jacques-Louis David, his pupil.
