Hays was born in Greenville, OH, on 5 April 1826. He worked as a portrait painter in Wingate, Covington, and Attica, all in Indiana, in the early 1850s; he then moved to Indianapolis, IN, where he taught at McLean’s Female Seminary and worked in partnership with a photographer; he was among the top portraitists in the city at the time as well as a successful teacher of painting and drawing. He painted two panoramas based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin shortly after it was published. He spent 1871 to 1873 in Cincinnati, OH, then returned to Indianapolis. In 1882 he moved to Minneapolis, MN. For his remaining thirty-two years he continued to teach and paint portraits and landscapes, as well as the still lifes of fruit and game for which he is best known today. He is also known to have painted at least one angling composition of a trout rising to the fly.

The Smithsonian Institution’s, Inventory of American Paintings lists his Landscape with Cows as belonging to a private collector in Indiana.

Hays died in Minneapolis, MN, on 14 March 1914

Source: http://www.redfoxfineart.com