Hoyte, who would become one of New Zealand's leading watercolourists, arrived in New Zealand in 1860 and taught and exhibited in Auckland in the 1860s. He exhibited in New South Wales and Victoria in the 1870s and moved to Sydney in 1879 where he was elected the first President of the Art Society of New South Wales. His work was represented in the Centennial Exhibition, Melbourne, in 1888-9 and in the Centennial Exhibition, Wellington, in 1940.

The Pink and White terraces at Rotomahana were popular subjects with artists in New Zealand in the 1860s and 1870s and were painted repeatedly by Charles Blomfield in the early 1880s before their destruction by the volcanic eruptions which beset the Rotorua district in June 1886