Curtis Moffat - Later Years

Later Years

Moffat continued to live and work at Fitzroy Square. He and Iris Tree had been divorced in 1932. He returned to portrait photography and also undertook commercial colour photography. He began experimenting with the complex and delicate carbro three colour process. A one-man show of his colour photographs, "Still Lifes and Compositions with Light", was held at the Mayor Gallery in 1925. His work was included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Photography 1839–1937". On 16 April 1936 in London, he married Kathleen Allan, who had worked with him for some years in his studio. The couple had a daughter, Penelope, in 1938.

Moffat's original and eclectic taste in art and design also extended into the area of gastronomy. He was an early member of the Wine and Food Society and the Saintsbury Club, and a close friend of André Simon. His table was famous for its wine and food, the choice of the latter being governed by his selection of the former, according to his son, Ivan. His large house in Fitzroy Square, perhaps the first and most original of the so-called modern interiors of the late Twenties and early Thirties, was the meeting place for many of the celebrated painters, writers, critics and designers of the day.

Early in 1939, Moffat returned to New York where he held a one-man show of his paintings. He and his family then settled on Martha's Vineyard in 1940, where he continued to paint until he died in 1949 in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on the Vinyard. His photographic archive and papers relating to his gallery, Curtis Moffat Ltd., are held and exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.