SNIPPET: For decades Raymond PIPER had been on the trail of the wild orchids all over Ireland. He first saw a wild orchid growing in Belfast in the early Forties; since that time he had tracked down more than 33 kinds in Ireland and had discovered at least five new species, per an eight-page article (with many colorful drawings) in the July-August 1999 issue of Dublin's "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine, by Alf McCREARY, writer, author, and award-winning journalist who lives and works in Belfast. An outstanding portrait artist, PIPER lived in, some would say, his cluttered, house at the end of a very rural lane just off Belfast's Malone Road. In that magazine article, PIPER reflected on his lifetime passion for orchids and his lively interest in all aspects of science and art - "If I had had my way, I would have been a botanist, not an artist. From an early age, I was fascinated by all forms of animal life, insects and plants ..." Per his 2007 obituary in the "The Guardian" newspaper: The Irish artist Raymond Piper, who has died in Belfast at the age of 84, was renowned as a portrait painter but will be most remembered for his botanical paintings and book illustrations. Born in London, he moved to Northern Ireland with his family when he was six. He was educated at the Mercantile college (now Belfast high school) and as a boy he was keen on nature and loved to climb Cavehill, the mountain above the city. Piper was passionate about painting and attended evening classes at the Belfast College of Art, although he was largely self-taught. His father's decision, however, to send him to work in the shipyards led to a job as a marine engineer at Harland and Wolff. He used his time there to develop his artist's eye. "When I had a moment or two to spare between jobs," he said, "I would draw someone. I drew everything in those days. I carried drawing books in my pocket. I never drew ships. I drew the Cavehill from the shipyard." He later went on to teach art at the Royal School Dungannon, county Tyrone, before becoming a full-time artist in 1948, with his first one-man show in 1953. Piper established a reputation for skilfully capturing the personalities of his portrait sitters. Among his subjects were the lord mayors of London and Belfast. He also painted one of Ireland's most outstanding naturalists and writers, Robert Lloyd Praeger, the author of the classic work The Way That I Went in 1937. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Piper collaborated with another Irish writer, Richard Hayward, to illustrate a series of discursive travel books about Ireland. They drove thousands of miles all over the country and produced five books in a regional series called This Is Ireland, published by Arthur Barker. Piper's evocative sketches, with distinctive half-tone pencil drawings, portray an Ireland far removed from the Celtic tiger of recent times ... Hayward's enthusiasm for Ireland infected Piper, and it was while working on the final book, Munster and the City of Cork (1964), that he became fascinated with Ireland's wild flowers, especially orchids. Over the next four decades he studied and drew the various species with precision, particularly at the limestone pavement of the Burren region in county Clare, which boasts 22 species of orchid along with some enigmatic variants. He became a champion of the Burren, visiting the area regularly. In 1968 he painted a suite of wild flowers that included mountain avens, twayblade, gentian and wild strawberry in oil on prepared boards. His original orchid drawings now hang in the sitting-room of the Gregan's Castle hotel, near Ballyvaughan, in the Burren. Piper's orchid studies were exhibited in the natural history section of the British Museum in 1974, and in the same year he was also awarded the John Lindley medal by the Royal Horticultural Society. The Ulster Museum in Belfast and the Royal Dublin Society also exhibited his work. In 1987 the Blackstaff Press produced Piper's Flowers, a limited edition that included five of his Irish orchid paintings, and the following year he received the Beck's bursary for outstanding services to botanical illustration. Apart from painting and botany, his interests included music, ballet and reading - his book collection contained a Charles Darwin first edition about the fertilisation of orchids. Gregarious and approachable, (he was known to some as "the orchid man"), Piper had a sharp sense of humour, a wide circle of friends in the artistic world and an interest in the cultural life of Northern Ireland. He lunched regularly in the Wellington Park hotel in Belfast, where the Piper bistro was named in his honour. The hotel also has a permanent exhibition of his work. He was a fellow of the Linnaean Society, as well as a member of the Royal Ulster and Royal Irish academies. He is survived by his two sisters, a nephew and two nieces. Raymond Piper, artist and botanist, born April 4, 1923, died July 13, 2007.