Dogs Playing Poker

This site is a tertiary source that cites no sources, and provides no attribution or contact information of any kind. It appears to exist solely as a place to slap up minor bits of dog, and mostly dog-food, information to which to attack Google AdSpace ads. (January 2010)">unreliable source?] All eighteen paintings in the overall 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 kitsch art in home decoration.

Depictions and reenactments of the series have appeared in many films, television shows, theater productions, and other popular culture art forms. 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".

The first painting, Coolidge's 1894 Poker Game, sold for $658,000 at a 2015 auction.

 

 

 

 

 

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

The titles in the Brown & Bigelow series are:

• A Bachelor's Dog – reading the mail
• A Bold Bluff  – poker (originally titled Judge St. Bernard Stands Pat on Nothing)
• Breach of Promise Suit – testifying in court
• A Friend in Need (1903) – poker, cheating
• Pinched with Four Aces (1903) – poker
• New Year's Eve in Dogville – ballroom dancing
• One to Tie Two to Win – baseball
• Pinched with Four Aces – poker, illegal gambling
• Poker Sympathy (1903) – poker
• Post Mortem – poker, camaraderie
• The Reunion – smoking and drinking, camaraderie
• Riding the Goat – Masonic initiation
• Sitting up with a Sick Friend (1905) – poker, gender relations
• Stranger in Camp – poker, camping
• Ten Miles to a Garage – travel, car trouble, teamwork
• A Waterloo (1906) – poker (originally titled Judge St. Bernard Wins on a Bluff)

These were followed in 1910 by a similar painting, Looks Like Four of a Kind. Other Coolidge paintings featuring anthropomorphized dogs include Kelly Pool, which shows dogs playing kelly pool.

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.

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. The previous top price for a Coolidge was $74,000. In 2015, Poker Game sold for $658,000, currently the highest price paid for a Coolidge.

• William Wegman
• Laying Down the Law, 1840 painting