Figures on Bush Track, Coromandel

John Barr Clark Hoyte was born in England and lived in Aotearoa from 1860 to 1879. An energetic and enterprising artist, he travelled widely in search of subjects for his precise watercolours, recording dramatic landscapes, economic activities, and growing colonial settlements with equal enthusiasm.

Hoyte’s four works in the Fletcher Trust Collection depict the Coromandel area, which he seems to have visited on several occasions, and date to the late 1860s, when investment was increasing in connection with the mining of gold from quartz reefs. They were acquired in 1962, the first paintings bought by Sir James Fletcher and George Fraser for the collection.