Rory was best known for his watercolours of leaves and flowers on vellum. He died (too young) in 1982. But his work remains: in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in museums and private collections all over the world.

His niece, Christian says of Rory:"It was from looking at Rory's pictures that I first began to see. He was my mentor for a crucial nine years, from my late teens until well into my twenties. He was an artist, first and foremost, whereas I knew from early on that I wanted to write. But across all the differences of genre and gender, the endeavour was the same. Even now, he is someone from whom I'm still learning, someone whose work still startles and inspires me, whose interests (in nature, poetry, music, art and Buddhism) consistently reinvigorate my own."