The fascinating Bush-Holley Historic Site (39 Strickland Rd., Cos Cob, 203/869-6899, www.hstg.org/index.cgi/632, noon–4 p.m. Wed.–Sun. Mar.–Dec.; noon–4 p.m. Fri.–Sun. Jan.–Feb., $10 adults, $8 seniors and students, free children under 7) explores two eras simultaneously. The heart of the site is the Bush-Holley House, a combination of two homes that date from the early 18th century and are filled with period furnishings and antiques. In its later life, however, the homes were purchased by the Holley family, who set up a boarding house for writers and painters in the 1880s that became Connecticut’s first art colony.

The colony took off when New York painter John Henry Twachtman set up shop in the complex to teach students in the hot Parisian style of Impressionism. They found ideal subjects in the surrounding orchards and salt marshes on Long Island Sound. As the colony gained fame, Twachtman was joined by other European-trained Impressionists such as Childe Hassam and Leonard Ochtman and his wife, Mina.

The free-spirited atmosphere at the house was looked upon with raised eyebrows by the genteel residents of nearby Greenwich. As the community gradually lost its rural character, the artists moved on in 1914, many up the coast to the Griswold house in Old Lyme. Some of their work, however, remains on-site at a small museum.