With his influence extending to Russia, England, and the United States, and clients including Catherine the Great and Thomas Jefferson, Clérisseau played a key role in the genesis of neoclassical architecture during the second half of the 18th century.

Over a period of five weeks in 1757 Adam sketched and supervised the documentation of the ruins, while Clérisseau produced perspectives, and two German draftsmen undertook the measured drawings.

[6] On the first of December, 1763, in San Luigi dei Francesi (Church of St. Louis of the French) in Rome, Clérisseau married Therèse, daughter of the sculptor Pierre de l'Estache.

Although they never met, and he never traveled to Russia, Clérisseau nonetheless attracted the attention of Catherine the Great, who in 1773 solicited from him plans for a house in a style à l'antique to be erected in her gardens at Tsarskoye Selo.

Catherine was vexed when she received the plans, which were far more elaborate than she expected, "a grandiose Roman palace" described "as the Baths of Caracalla set into Hadrian's Villa."

Nevertheless, in 1778 Catherine again approached him, through an emissary, and arranged to purchase over a thousand drawings and artworks from him; this huge cache would ultimately find a home in the Hermitage.

In 1780 she asked Clérisseau to design a triumphal arch to be built in Russia, but when the plans arrived she decided the gigantic project would be too large and expensive and abandoned it.

In recognition of his artistic achievements and his efforts on her behalf, the empress made Clérisseau an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Arts and bestowed on him the title Premier Architecte de Sa Majestée Impériale.

In 1785, Clérisseau was retained by Thomas Jefferson to produce designs for the Virginia State Capitol, based on the Maison Carrée, the ancient Roman temple in Nîmes.

Jefferson wrote that "it was a considerable time before I could find an architect whose taste had been formed on a study of ancient models of this art; the style of architecture in this capital [Paris] being far from chaste."

[20] In 2012, a lot of two works by Clérisseau described as "Two architectural capricci with peasants, musicians and other figures frolicking among classical ruins," signed and dated 1773 and 1774, was auctioned at Christie's for $74,500.