Dogs Playing Poker

His Station and Four Aces by C. M. Coolidge, 1903.

Dogs Playing Poker refers collectively to an 1894 painting, a series of sixteen oil paintings, and a 1910 painting by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. Brown & Bigelow commissioned the 16 painting series in 1903 to advertise cigars.[1] All eighteen paintings in the series feature anthropomorphized dogs, but the eleven in which dogs are seated around a card table have become well known in the United States as examples of mainly working-class taste in home decoration.

Critic Annette Ferrara has described Dogs Playing Poker as "indelibly burned into ... the American collective-schlock subconscious ... through incessant reproduction on all manner of pop ephemera".[2]

The first painting, Coolidge's 1894 Poker Game, realized $658,000 at a Sotheby's New York sale on 18 November 2015.[3]

Coolidge paintings

Poker Game, oil on canvas, 1894, sold for $658,000 in 2015

The title of Coolidge's 1894 painting is Poker Game.

The titles in the Brown & Bigelow Dogs Playing Poker series are:

These were followed in 1910 by a similar painting, Looks Like Four of a Kind.

Some of the compositions in the series are modeled on paintings of human card-players by such artists as Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, and Paul Cézanne.[4]

On February 15, 2005, the originals of A Bold Bluff and Waterloo were auctioned as a pair to an undisclosed buyer for US $590,400.[5] The previous top price for a Coolidge was $74,000.[6] The 2015 sale price of Coolidge's 1894 Poker Game, $658,000, is now the highest price paid for a Coolidge.

A Waterloo, 1906
Sitting up with a Sick Friend (circa 1905)

See also

A Friend in Need (1903)

Notes

  1. "Dogs Playing Poker". Ooo Woo – Complete Dog Resource. 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2006.
  2. Ferrara, Annette (April 2008). "Lucky Dog!". Ten by Ten Magazine. Chicago: Tenfold Media. Archived from the original on March 27, 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2006.
  3. "That Dogs Playing Poker Painting Just Sold for Over $650,000". GQ.
  4. 1 2 3 McManus, James. "Play It Close to the Muzzle and Paws on the Table," New York Times (December 3, 2005).
  5. "A New York auction offers artistic treats for dog lovers," San Jose Mercury News (Feb 11, 2005).
  6. "'Dogs Playing Poker' sell for $590K". Money.com. CNN. February 16, 2005. Retrieved September 11, 2006.
  7. DogsPlayingPoker.org: The Simpsons. Accessed on 2009-04-30

References

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