He was encouraged to learn drawing by Joseph Wright of Derby, and having attracted the attention of the painter George Romney, and of John Flaxman, was in 1795 articled to Flaxman as a resident pupil for three years.

In 1798, however, he showed symptoms of ill-health, arising from curvature of the spine, and was compelled to return to his father's cottage at Felpham in Sussex, where, after two years of suffering, he died on 2 May 1800.

[1] He was buried nearby at Eartham; his monument there was carved and erected by Flaxman, with an epitaph composed by his father.

[2] Hayley modelled busts of Flaxman, Lord Thurlow, and James Stanier Clarke.

In his father's Essays on Sculpture (1800), there are a portrait of young Hayley from a medallion by Flaxman, and a drawing by him of The Death of Demosthenes, both engraved by William Blake.