A portrait and genre painter, Lay appears to have begun serious study of painting after returning from Europe in 1860. His first oil study was executed in 1861 under the guidance of Thomas Hicks but according to Lay's personal record book, he had left his Hicks's studio by March 1862. Lay also sought instruction at the Cooper Union and the National Academy, where he spent an unusually long period in the Antique (1860-70) and Life (1862-9) classes.
As early as 1862, Lay was spending summers in Connecticut, although he later passed time in Maine and upstate New York. In 1887, he moved to New Rochelle, New York, but maintained a summer address in Connecticut. His work was evenly divided between portraits and genre paintings and examples of both were regular features at the National Academy's annual exhibitions from 1863 to his death. Never in good health, Lay died of tuberculosis, prompting a memorial to be read into the Academy minutes: 'His kindly and blameless life was one of many struggles and of much bodily infirmity, which he bore with a gentleness and patience characteristic of his nature . . . '
[note: an instructor in Brooklyn Academy of Design, 1870s -- see Marlor]
