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Community Corner

Westport Holiday Art Show

Holiday event features live music and great international art. Stop in, have a glass of wine, see art from England, France, the U.S., Germany.


Westport River Gallery offers distinctive European, French, British, American and Asian fine art, working with all levels of art collectors, corporate clients and decorators. Artists are selected based on their reputation, level of credentials and distinctions. Styles include classic impressionistic, realistic, abstract and sometimes modern.


Artists include internationally collected French artists Dominique Dorie, Jean Pierre Dubord, Yetvart Kaprielian, Jean Claude Duteil, Elisabeth Estivalet, Poumelin, Kerfily. Henri Lepetit. Top American artists include Louis Schanker, Eugene Paprocki, Milton Bond, HM Saffer, Vitello, Antonelle, Mona, Zider and others. The gallery is also known for offering works by the father of French Impressionism Camille Pissarro, and his subsequent three generations of artists including Lucien Pissarro, Rodo Pissarro, Paulemile Pissarro, H. Claude Pissarro, and Lelia Pissarro. The gallery also carries unique glassware by Katharine Hepburn’s nephew. Westport River Gallery is owned and operated by Ken & Pat Warren, and is located next to the downtown area off the Saugatuck River.

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 Colonists settled along the Saugatuck River as early as 1639. In 1780 George Washington visited the Marvin Tavern. Westport was officially incorporated as a town in 1835, with land taken from Fairfield, Weston, and Norwalk. For many decades after that, Westport was a prosperous agricultural community and distinguished itself as the nation’s leading onion-growing center. After the turn of the century, Westport gained the reputation as an artist’s colony and cultural center. In 1920 F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald spend summer in Westport. Although Westport still retains its cultural roots, the town is no longer an artist’s colony. Despite its small town charm, Westport, Connecticut is a thriving business center, home to many corporate headquarters and more than 600 retailers.


 For many years, Native Americans inhabited the area known as the village of Saugatuck. The names of the Saugatuck River (meaning mouth of the tidal river) and Compo Beach (meaning bear's fishing ground) are derived from the Native ancestors that had originally settled on this land.

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Being that the town was on the shoreline of the Long Island Sound, the village became known as a shipping center after the Revolutionary War. Around 1910, artists discovered the charms of Westport and it became a desirable suburb of NYC. Since then, famous residents of the city have included: the late Imogene Coca (Mary the Good Fairy on Bewitched), Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Helen Keller (spent her last years there), Meatloaf, Michael Bolton, Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas (That Girl), Patty Hearst, Keith Richards, Don Imus, Robert Redford, Mariette Hartley, Tina Louise (Ginger from Gilligan's Island), retailer J.C. Penney, Linda Blair, Pamela Sue Martin.

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