Date of Birth: 21 January, 1926
Place: Lowestoft, Suffolk
Profession: Painter, Architectural and Garden Historian, Photographer
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Nigel Temple served with the Royal Air Force between 1944 and 1948 afterwards attending Farnham School of Art for two years. Between 1952 and 1953 he attended Sheffield College of Art and followed a career in Art and Design and Environmental Education. In 1964 he was made a Fellow of the National Society for Art Education, in 1978 received his M.Litt in Architecture from the University of Bristol and in 1985 he received his Ph.D from the University of Keele. He has been the Registrar of Research for the Garden History Society since 1983 and in 1988 he received the Companion of the Guild of St George.
Nigel Temple has also published six books the last in 1993 by Scolar Press is entitled George Repton's Pavilion Notebook and records Repton's work with 162 supporting architectural illustrations accompanying the text, including all the cottages at Blaise Hamlet near Bristol. Nigel Temple has had several solo exhibitions of his own work, the most recent being at the New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham in 1990, the University of Reading in 1991, Cheltenham Art Gallery in 1998 and in 2000 at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Devon, where he showed a selection of paintings, collages and assemblages.
Noting the influences on his work in 2002 he said:
'In my student years and for a few years later, I was influenced in my paintings and drawings by Samuel Palmer, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. Later I was for a short time influenced in relief constructions by the optical art movement, using plastics, glass, metal and other industrial materials. From 1971 to date I have studiously avoided being knowingly influenced by anyone. What emerges comes from within rather than elsewhere.'
An active contributor to and exhibitor at the RWA formany years, Nigel Temple passed away in November 2003.
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