A pupil of Laurent Cars and Charles Natoire, Perroneau began his career as an engraver but soon abandoned it in favour of pastel portraits, the medium in which he concentrated almost entirely from 1744 onwards, although some oil portraits are known, such as the Lady with a Pet Cat and Portrait of a Gentleman (New York, Stair Sainty Matthiesen Gallery; now Malibu, The J. Paul Getty Museum). He was elected a member of the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1753, presenting two portraits, those of the sculptor, L.S. Adam, and the painter, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, both now in the Louvre. Although he exhibited at the Salon from 1746 onwards, Perroneau never achieved great fame in his lifetime nor did he manage to attract a Paris clientele. In 1754, the year of his marriage he traveled to Holland and began a nomadic life, moving from Holland to Spain and Hamburg, from Russia to Italy and England, and from Poland to Amsterdam, where he died at the age of sixty-eight.

Forgotten in the nineteenth century, Perroneau's work was thought to be that of two different artists, a painter in oils and a pastelist. Primarily a painter of intimate informal portraits, and misunderstood during his lifetime, he was rehabilitated by L. Vaillat and P. Ratouis de Limay in their monograph of 1923 and praised for the attention he paid his models, the sharp delineation of their character and above all for his great sense of colour.