Cassius Marcellus Coolidge

Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (September 18, 1844 – January 13, 1934), professionally best known as C. M. Coolidge, 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 Philadelphia, New York to abolitionist Quaker farmers, Coolidge was known by the nickname "Cash" 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.

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,^[1] 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.^[2] The original series of 16 paintings, and their themes, are:

A Bachelor's Dog – reading the mail

A Bold Bluff – poker

Breach of Promise Suit – testifying in court

A Friend in Need – poker, cheating

His Station and Four Aces – 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 – poker

Post Mortem – poker, camaraderie

The Reunion – smoking and drinking, camaraderie

Riding the Goat – Masonic initiation

Sitting up with a Sick Friend – poker, gender relations

Stranger in Camp – poker, camping

Ten Miles to a Garage – travel, car trouble, teamwork

Waterloo – poker

Additional paintings in a similar vein include:

Kelly Pool (ca. 1903) – pool
Looks Like Four of a Kind (1910) – poker