| C.M. Coolidge | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Cassius Marcellus Coolidge |
| Born | November 12, 1844 Antwerp, New York, United States |
| Died | January 24, 1934 (aged 89) |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Illustration, painting |
| Works | Dogs Playing Poker |
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (November 12, 1844 – January 24, 1934), was an American visual artist, best known for his paintings in the "dogs playing poker" genre. He was also known as Cash Coolidge (sometimes spelled Kash).
Born in Antwerp, New York to abolitionist Quaker farmers, Coolidge was known by the nickname "Rash" to friends and family. While he had no formal training as an artist, his natural aptitude for drawing led him to create cartoons for his local newspaper when in his twenties. He is credited with creating Comic Foregrounds, life-size cutouts into which one's head was placed so as to be photographed as an amusing character, common at midways and carnivals.[1]
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In 1903, Coolidge contracted with the advertising firm of Brown & Bigelow of St. Paul, Minnesota, to create sixteen oil paintings over several years, featuring anthropomorphized dogs engaging in various human activities. Nine of them depict dogs playing poker,[2] a meme Coolidge is credited with inventing, and which inspired 1950s American illustrator Arthur Sarnoff who is also famous for paintings of dogs playing pool, poker and craps, along with various other later imitators. On February 15, 2005, two of these much-imitated paintings, A Bold Bluff and Waterloo, went on the auction block expecting to fetch between $30,000 and $50,000 but surprisingly sold for $590,400 at Doyle New York. The auction set an auction record for Coolidge, whose previous top (posthumous) sale was $74,000.[3] The original series of 16 paintings, and their themes, are:
Additional paintings in a similar vein include:
Kelly Pool in particular (named for a specific pool game common in Coolidge's time) led to another memetic pop-culture art genre, that of "dogs playing pool".