He began his training in Paris with Jacques-François Blondel at l'École des Arts, where he met Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni and formed a lifelong friendship with Charles De Wailly.

In 1762 he built a villa for Mme Leprêtre de Neubourg in the southwest suburbs of Paris near the Gobelins; demolished in 1909, it is known only through the engravings in his Oeuvres d'architecture and two photographs taken in 1900 by Eugène Atget.

Peyre interspersed his own work with carefully drawn views and sections of Roman monuments, such as a reconstruction of the tomb of Caecilia Metella, not as it was to be seen in Rome, but as it had originally been constructed.

[5] De Wailly and Peyre were commissioned in 1767 to begin designs the project on the orders of Marigny, on the momentum gained by their joint success at the Opéra of Versailles.

Work, on foundations already constructed by Moreau, began in May 1779, paid for by Monsieur, and by 16 February 1782, the players of the Comédie Française, who had objected to the project from the start, were installed in the new theatre, which was inaugurated by Marie-Antoinette, 9 April 1782, with a performance of Racine's Iphigénie.