Colin Graham Frederick Hayes was born in London on 17 November 1919. His father was Gerald Hayes, a mathematician and musicologist. His mother Winifred, a painter and sculptor, had studied at the Aberdeen and Edinburgh colleges of art, and at the Royal College of Art in London. Colin was educated at Westminster School and went on to Christ Church, Oxford, to read Modern History and also attended the Ruskin School of Drawing. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Hayes enlisted in the Royal Engineers and was commissioned in 1940. He was sent to Iceland and from there to North Africa, where he was wounded in the Western Desert. In 1943 he returned to England as a captain in the Survey Directorate of South Eastern Command. He was invalided out of the Army in 1945. Resuming his studies at Oxford, Hayes graduated, and then, despite being offered a place at the Slade in London, chose to return to the Ruskin, whose staff included Rodrigo Moynihan and Barnett Freedman, whom Hayes admired as artists and whose philosophies were similar to his own. His first teaching appointment was as Head of Painting at Cheltenham Ladies’ College but after two years, he was invited to join the staff at the Royal College of Art by the new Rector, the future Sir Robin Darwin. That coincided with Hayes’s first major one-man exhibition at Marlborough Fine Arts in London. He subsequently showed at Royal Academy Summer exhibitions, Agnew’s, the New Grafton Gallery, Fieldbourne Galleries and in the provinces. Hayes believed in hard work, observation and in constantly drawing. He should be noted for the observation; ‘You don’t really understand a subject until you have drawn it. In this way you become really familiar, and notice things that you would not otherwise have seen.’ His former student Fred Cuming would write: ‘Hayes’s knowledge of painting and other subjects was encyclopaedic. He seemed able to put his finger on how to make our work progress, always suggesting that we look at certain pictures by artists who were working in similar directions and engaged with problems that we were struggling with. His teaching was uncompromising – no short cuts, no easy routes. He taught us that self-criticism was about the most important thing that we could learn; he wanted his students to be enthusiastic but to beware of self-delusion, the development of the eye and the intellect being inseparable.’ In 1949 he married his first wife Jean Law (died 1988) and their happy union would be blessed by three daughters. Cuming would write of Hayes: ‘His fascination with colour and light probably stems from this time spent in North Africa as well as his later visits to India and the Mediterranean – Greece and Crete, Italy and France. He owned a small house on one of the Greek islands. His early training in the “Euston Road” manner, the influence of such artists as Walter Sickert and Harold Gilman, the ability to judge and pitch the tonal range of his palette so valuable to the figurative painter, always provided the underpinning and structure to his work – but he was acutely aware of the new painting coming from France, the Fauves. Derain, Matisse and Bonnard had a striking influence on his work, encouraging him to make frequent excursions to paint abroad and to face these new challenges and developments. Among his many students were Bridget Riley, Peter Blake, John Titchell, Ron Kitaj, David Hockney, Tony Whishaw, Jean Cook, John Bratby and Frank Auerbach, all of whom benefited from his quiet and wise guidance. Hayes was the last surviving member of the Royal College of Art fine-art staff painted by his friend Rodrigo Moynihan in Portrait Group (1951), now in the Tate Gallery collection. During the early 1950s, that group, under the guidance of Robin Darwin, was to make the RCA a leading force in English art education, and in changing the fortunes and image of the Royal Academy. Hayes played a key role in bringing about major changes of artistic attitude in both establishments. Hayes retired in 1984, but remained an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art. The New Grafton Gallery held a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1986. In 1992 he married Midge Christensen. He served as President of the Royal Society of Artists in the period 1993-98. He died London on 1 November 2003. The Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Council and a number of public collections hold examples of his work.