Claude Hayes

Claude Hayes RI (1852 – 25 January 1922) was a British and Irish artist who specialised in landscape painting; he is especially remembered for his landscape watercolours, though he also painted many oils in the earlier part of his career. Many of his oil paintings were of wintry scenes, whereas in watercolours he turned more to "open spaces with large expanses of sky and distance", which remained typical of his art throughout his life. He tended to concentrate on flat country, preferring English scenery. Animals and people were often included, but at a relatively small scale. Martin Hardie, who knew him well and greatly admired him, praises especially his "power of following broken ground into receding distance with able indication of form and colour values", and "his transparent use of fresh and untroubled colour", noting a "kinship with the Impressionists" in a work of 1912.