Vaillant pioneered the mezzotint alongside Prince Rupert of the Rhine. He produced over two hundred mezzotint sheets from the mid-1660s, making him one of the earliest and most prolific practitioners of a technique that would dominate reproductive printmaking for the next two centuries.

He was born in Lille in 1623, the eldest of five brothers who all became painters. He trained under Erasmus Quellinus II in Antwerp and worked as a portraitist in Amsterdam, with extended stays in Paris from 1659 to 1664. He is remembered today primarily as a printmaker rather than a painter. He died in Amsterdam in 1677.