Considered by many to be one of the best wildlife painters of the twentieth century, Raymond Harris Ching’s career as an artist started with his first exhibition 'Thirty Birds' in Auckland in 1966.
Discovered by publisher and ornithologist Sir William Collins who introduced him
to British wildlife painter Sir Peter Scott, Ching soon left for the United Kingdom and in one year produced over 200 individual paintings for the Reader's Digest Book of British Birds, published in 1969. This has gone on to become the world's most successful and biggest-selling ornithological book and remains in
print today.
Ray Ching's curiously un-English sounding name is Cornish in origin, and it is from there that his family sailed for New Zealand in 1840. They settled in Nelson, from where, on the family farm one hundred or so years later, Ray Ching was introduced to the birds and other creatures that have remained central to his art. Books on his paintings include: Raymond Ching, The Bird Paintings (1978), Studies & Sketches of a Bird Painter (1981), New Zealand Birds (1987), Wild Portraits (1988), Journey of an Artist (1990), Kiwis, A Monograph of the Family
Apterygidae (1990), Voice from the Wilderness (1994). Based in Bradford-on-Avon, England, he is presently working on a companion fables volume, entitled Aesop's Outback Fables.