Professor Stephen Rees-Jones, M.Sc.

Stephen Rees-Jones was born on 1 September 1909 and educated at Holywell Grammar Schhol, Flintshire, and the University College of North Wales at Bangor, where he graduated in physics and gained an M.Sc. for research into X-ray diffraction. In 1935 he was appointed research assistant in the new scientific department of the Courtauld Institute of Art where, apart from war service, he was to spend the whole of his professional career. As time went by, Rees-Jones' analytical expertise in the fields of pigment identification and x-radiography were to make the Institute one of the foremost international centres for the technical examination of paintings. When war came, Rees-Jones spent it in charge of the laboratories of the Ministry of Aircraft Production specializing in light alloy castings. Having rejoined the Courtauld after the war, he was appointed head of the technology department in 1951. The department was, in fact, a warren of small rooms crammed higgledy-piggedly with primitive equipment and students' paraphernalia in the mews behind 20 Portman Square but Rees-Jones was oblivious to the improvised accommodation and from it emerged radical advances in key areas of conservation. Experiments on the structural treatment of paintings on canvas led to Rees-Jones' design for the first hot-table for lining canvases, an appliance now exhibited in the Courtauld's premises in Somerset House as a museum piece of primary significance in the history of conservation. The importance of the courses in the scientific examination and conservation of paintings pioneered by Rees-Jones was finally recognized in 1976, the year he retired, by the establishment of the present three-year diploma course. But throughout his career Rees-Jones fixed his sights higher than the Courtauld, popular though his charm, kindliness and gifts as a teacher made him to his students, and he was tireless in promoting the conservation profession worldwide. He was a founder-fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (I.I.C.) in 1950, its treasurer, the first editor of I.I.C. Abstracts, chairman of the U.K. Group and an influential figure in the organization of its first, highly successful, congress in Rome in 1961. Regular conferences followed and the academic world came to accept conservation as an essential element in the teaching and practice of art history. The pros and cons of the cleaning of Old Masters were periodically aired in the specialist press during the 1960s and 70s, as they are still, and Rees-Jones added his contributions to the controversy, always reasoned, lucid and scientifically sound. In 1975 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Academy Schools and for ten years gave an annual course of lectures on the principles of colour and light, some of the sessions taking place in the Antiquaries' Meeting Room. Rees-Jones was always a good Antiquary and, during the time he was establishing his diploma course at the Courtauld, a number of the Society's paintings were cleaned and conserved by his students under his expert supervision, at a time when money for such purposes was not readily available. He died on 17 December 1996, with the satisfaction of knowing that one of his sons, also Stephen, had succeeded him as head of the technology department at the Courtauld.