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.

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.

• 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

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

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.