Having originally studied architecture at South Kensington, Hayward gave studying architecture up in favour of painting.

Initially studying at Warrington School of Art and the Slade, Hayward moved to St. Ives, Cornwall, home to a thriving artists’ community centred on Stanhope Forbes, under whom he studied.

Following the Great War in which Hayward served in the Royal Field Artillery, he settled in Penzance painting subjects similar to those of the Cornish artist Harold Harvey also a Penzance resident, taking advantage of the works suffused with the particular Cornish light.

He moved to St. Ives in the mid 1920’s painting local figures and characters, together with views of the harbour and fishing boats.

Hayward was also a portrait painter of note, and his ebullient self portrait of 1933 set in Penzance, resides in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. He exhibited a further self-portrait at the Royal Academy in 1947 and he received numerous commissions.

Hayward exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy from 1920 to 1947, at the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour, at the Royal Scottish Academy and at the Paris Salon. He was a member of the St. Ives Art Club and Principal of the St. Ives School of Painting.

His works can be found in museums in: London, Arts Council, National Portrait Gallery; Leamington Spa; Warrington and Auckland, New Zealand.