Dogs Playing Poker
Dogs Playing Poker refers collectively to a series of sixteen oil paintings by C. M. Coolidge, commissioned in 1903 by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars.[1] All the paintings in the series feature anthropomorphized dogs, but the nine 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]
Coolidge paintings
The titles in the "Dogs Playing Poker" series proper are:
- A Bold Bluff (originally titled Judge St. Bernard Stands Pat on Nothing)[3]
- A Friend in Need
- His Station and Four Aces
- Pinched with Four Aces
- Poker Sympathy
- Post Mortem
- Sitting up with a Sick Friend
- Stranger in Camp
- Waterloo (originally titled Judge St. Bernard Wins on a Bluff)[3]
- Ten Miles to a Garage
- Riding the Goat
- New Year's Eve in Dogville
- One to Tie Two to Win
- Breach of Promise Suit
- The Reunion
- A Bachelor's Dog
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.[3]
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.[4] The previous top price for a Coolidge was $74,000.[5]
See also
Notes
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[unreliable source?]
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 McManus, James. "Play It Close to the Muzzle and Paws on the Table," New York Times (December 3, 2005).
- ↑ "A New York auction offers artistic treats for dog lovers," San Jose Mercury News (Feb 11, 2005).
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
References
- Harris, Maria Ochoa. "It's A Dog's World, According to Coolidge," A Friendly Game of Poker" (Chicago Review Press, 2003).
