Richard Temple founded the Temple Gallery in 1959. He has sold icons to the British Museum, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Timken Art Gallery in San Diego, California and the Museum of the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Moscow. He advised the collector Eric Bradley, whose icons passed into the Museum of the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, and he formed the collection of the late Mrs John D. Rockefeller III. His books include Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity (Element Books, 1990, 1992, Luzac Oriental, 2001) and ICONS Divine Beauty, (Saqi Books, 2004). He also wrote a PhD thesis on 'Peter Bruegel the Elder and the Esoteric Tradition' which can be read here.
Kurt Weitzmann in "Sailing with Byzantium, The Memoirs of an Art Historian" (Editio Maris 1994, p. 488) wrote that "Richard Temple... is the foremost dealer in icons". Dr Weitzmann was a member of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton USA and professor in the Art Department at Princeton University and was the world's leading Byzantinist of the 20th century.
