Here are some fun facts about the Dogs Playing Poker painting
The painting called Dogs Playing Poker is one of the most popular paintings featuring animals, specifically dogs, and here are some interesting facts about this.
This was created by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (a.k.a. C.M. Coolidge) and based on the article in Mental Floss, it is actually a series of paintings. Initially, the dog paintings were made for cigar boxes. In 1903, he started working for the “remembrance advertising” company Brown & Bigelow.
From that, Coolidge created paintings that were reproduced as posters, calendars, and prints, sometimes as parts of promotional giveaways.
The most popular of these painting series is the Dogs Playing Poker in which the players were cheating. It is actually named A Friend In Need and it is because of how a dog helped another by slipping a card under the table.
This fame Coolidge’s popularity and money. He was able to sell the original paintings for $2000 to $10,000. Another piece of art that is worth millions is the Most Expensive Dollhouse called Astolat Dollhouse Castle. Despite its popularity, this painting did not receive much critical praise. “For some the paintings represent the epitome of kitsch or lowbrow culture, a poor-taste parody of ‘genuine’ art,” Poker News’s Martin Harris explained.
Some believed that this painting of dogs was a sort of self-portrait. It is because Coolidge had a few career changes. He was painting street signs and houses and also tried his hand at being a druggist, an art teacher, and cartoonist and then, he painted for calendars. He also established his own bank and then, a newspaper company. Because of these occupations, it is being considered that the dogs that are looking for the angles represented own ambitions of the painter.
The Dogs Playing Poker is popular in pop culture. It made several TV appearances but Coolidge’s family was never impressed of his work. His 92-year-old daughter Gertrude told The New York Times in 2002 that she and her mother were more of cat lovers. Even the art elite still shows no respect to Coolidge’s works.