A curator with a starry past

Jon Whiteley, who has died aged 75, was a British film actor who won an honorary Oscar and worked with Fritz Lang – before retiring to go to secondary school. Later, he carved out a yet more distinguished career as a renowned art historian, with a special interest in 19th century French art.

Born in Monymusk, Aberdeenshire in 1945, he was the son of a primary school headmaster and an elocution coach, said The Times. When he was six, the BBC came to his school, and recorded him reciting The Owl and the Pussy-cat

for Children’s Hour. A talent scout heard it, which led to him acting in five films in the 1950s. He starred opposite Dirk Bogarde (whom he recalled as “jolly and generous”) in Hunted and The Spanish

Gardener, and Stewart Granger in Lang’s

Moonfleet. He won the Academy Award in 1953 for his “outstanding juvenile” performance in

The Kidnappers. It was term time, however, and his parents saw no point in him going all that way to collect the statuette, so it was sent to him in the post.

It had always been agreed that he’d focus on his education when he turned 11, and he duly made his last appearance in 1957. “I missed the habit of having a chauffeur,” he said later. “But I would have fallen flat on my face like a great number of child actors.” In 1964 he went up to Oxford to study history, and never left. A hugely popular figure in the art world, he became assistant curator at Christ Church Picture Gallery in 1976, and joined The Ashmolean in 1978. He is survived by his wife, Linda, a fellow art historian, and their two children.