The Temple Gallery

Sir Richard Temple founded the Temple Gallery in 1959 as a centre for the study, restoration and exhibition of ancient icons and sacred art.

Originally based in Yeoman's Row, Knightsbridge, London the gallery moved to its current premises in Clarendon Cross, near Holland Park, in the early 1980s. They specialise in Russian and Greek icons from the 16th to the 19th century and sell to private clients as well as to national museums, both at home and abroad.
Sir Richard is a member of the Advisory Panel of the Art Fund (formerly the National Art Collections Fund of Great Britain) and has been active in the acquisition of icons by several major museums, among them 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 has played a major role in the formation of several highly important private collections such as that of Mr Eric Bradley, which passed into the Museum of the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, the collection of the late Mrs John D. Rockefeller III and the collection, now housed in Vicenza, of the Banca Intesa, Italy.

He serves on the vetting committees for the Olympia and BADA fairs, and over the years has published many catalogues and scholarly articles on icons including two books 'Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity' and 'ICONS: Divine Beauty'.