Philippe Roberts-Jones

Baron Philippe Roberts-Jones (8 November 1924 – 9 August 2016) 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 (1893–1943), 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.