HOYTE, JOHN BARR CLARKE (1835-1913)

“Southern Lakes, NZ” (c.1875)
watercolour
cm
Signed lower right
 
Hoyte was a prominent, English-born New Zealand Colonial painter. He worked as a customs clerk in Auckland before embarking on a career as a school teacher, private art teacher, watercolourist and sometime importer of artists' supplies. He taught English, drawing and other subjects at the Church of England Grammar School intermittently between 1862 and the 1870s, and taught briefly at Wesley College in Queen Street and at Auckland Grammar School. He was giving private art tuition by June 1862. As his career as a painter developed he travelled extensively and began to play a prominent role in the Auckland art world. He was one of the founders of the Auckland Society of Artists in 1869–70 and served for several years as its secretary. In 1876 the family settled briefly in Nelson before moving to Dunedin, ostensibly because of that city's reputation as a centre of culture and taste and because of 'the fruitful source of subjects which our Provincial scenery offers to the painter's brush'. In Dunedin Hoyte immediately joined the Otago Art Society and was in due course co-opted to its governing body. The Hoyte's moved to Australia in 1879, where apart from a brief residence in Melbourne in 1888–92, he lived and painted in Sydney for the remainder of his life.Nothing is known of Hoyte's education and artistic training and we are reduced to the obvious deduction that he was heir to the English tradition of topographic draughtsmanship and watercolour painting. He exhibited paintings whenever and wherever he could, in his home and studio, at fêtes and fairs and in many formal art exhibitions in both New Zealand and Australia.