Philippe Roberts-Jones

Baron Philippe Roberts-Jones was a Belgian art historian who was the head of conservation of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. A member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, of which he was president in 1980, he was also a member of the Free Academy of Belgium and a professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He was also a published poet.

Biography

Born in Ixelles, Belgium, on 8 November 1924, Philippe Roberts-Jones belonged to a family of three generations of lawyers, descending from a British family established in Brussels at the beginning of the 19th century and that had been active in the coachwork industry.
His father Robert Roberts-Jones, a lawyer, was a member of the Belgian Resistance and was executed by the Germans at the Tir national on 20 October 1943.
Philippe Roberts-Jones died on 9 August 2016 at the age of 91.

Prizes

Prix Émile Polak from the Belgian Royal Academy of French Language and Literature, 1957, for Amour et autres visages
Prix Malherbe of the Province of Brabant, 1976, for L'Art Majeur
Prix du rayonnement de la langue française, from the Académie française, 1980, for his collected output
Grand prix de poésie de l'Académie française, 1985
Prix Louis-Guillaume for prose poetry, 2002, for Domaines en cours
Grand prix international Lucian Blaga, 2006

Distinctions

Robert-Jones was made a Baron by King Baudouin in 1988.
;Belgium

Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown
Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold
Volunteers' Medal for War
Commemorative Medal of the 1940–1945 War, with sabres
Civic Medal, first class

;France

Commandeur of the Légion d'honneur
Commandeur of the ordre des Arts et des Lettres

;Spain

Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic

; Italy

Commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy

; Finland

Grand Officer of the Order of the Lion of Finland

Work

As a poet he publishes under the name Philippe Jones. Among his published works are:

Le Voyageur de la nuit
Amours et autres visages
Être selon
Racine ouverte
Un espace renoué

As an art historian, he was interested in the work of Honoré Daumier and in contemporary engraving; another field of interest of his was the work of Belgian painter Lismonde.