The works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, and Paul Cézanne are often cited as influences on how Coolidge posed his canine card players. 14. The art elite still give Dogs Playing Poker no respect. In the 2006 Family Guy episode " Saving Private Brian", Mayor West is discovered playing poker with dogs. In the episode " Road to Rhode Island", Stewie comments on the Dogs Playing Poker paintings hanging on a wall, and suggests that since Jesus is alone in one of the other paintings, the dogs should invite him to their card game.

In an episode of Animaniacs, a young Pablo Picasso's artistic frustration is demonstrated by his producing a DPP painting.

The Narrative

The collection was completed in 1910, when Coolidge painted Looks Like Four Of A Kind and brought the total number of artworks to 18. How were the paintings received? The music video for Snoop Dogg's 1993 song, " What's My Name", depicts dogs playing craps while smoking cigars and wearing sunglasses.

Dogs Playing Poker is the collective title for a series of 18 paintings. The first, Poker Game , was self-standing for almost ten years, until the Minnesota-based publishing company Brown & Bigelow commissioned Coolidge to create 16 oil paintings to advertise cigars in 1903. Of these 16, nine feature dogs playing poker – in the remaining seven, they enjoy other (distinctly dog-unfriendly) activities such as ballroom dancing, appearing in court, and reading the mail. Some have often compared Coolidge’s A Friend in Need with English artist Sir Edwin Landseer’s painting, Laying Down the Law(1840). Both feature dogs gathered around pensively, acting like people—card-players in Coolidge’s work and lawyers in Landseer’s—however, Coolidge’s painting portrays a much lighter and comical spirit compared to Landseer’s more serious, solemn tone. Coolidge painted 16 pieces within this collection, but only nine of them actually show dogs playing poker. Higher Education displayed helmeted pups playing football. New Year’s Eve in Dogsville imagines a romantic soiree with dinner and dancing dogs. And Breach of Promise Suit showed a canine court. 10. Dogs Playing Poker has a small place of honor in Philadelphia, New York. Whether you love them or hate them, Dogs Playing Poker have become some of the most iconic paintings in America. Just be sure not to follow the example of Coolidge’s (obviously cheating) dogs when you play your own poker games. Categories

Who was Cassius Marcellus Coolidge?

Thanks to Dogs Playing Poker, painter Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (a.k.a. C.M. Coolidge) has earned the dubious distinction of being called “the most famous American artist you’ve never heard of.” But while critics might sniff at his contribution to the art world, the history of his greatest works is rich. 1. Dogs Playing Poker is actually a series of paintings. The 1998 season four episode "Sinking Ship" of the TV series NewsRadio spoofs the 1997 film Titanic. As the characters are shown fleeing the sinking ship/broadcasting studio they dump famous artworks but hold on to a Dogs Playing Poker, which a character claims is a "great picture". The cover of the 1981 album, Moving Pictures by Rush, features A Friend in Need as one of the three pictures being moved. what ever table you get make sure the slate is true and well supported underneath , and if possible double bolted leg jointed. If you fancy the better Welsh slate older tables then Burroughs and watts or any of the better make tables such as Thurston , Orme , George Wright , to name just three .

Auction notes from the Doyle event explain, “The [paintings’] sequential narrative follows the same ‘players’ in the course of a hand of poker. In the first ( A Bold Bluff), our main character, the St. Bernard, holds a weak hand as the rest of the crew maintains their best poker faces. In the following scene ( Waterloo: Two), we see the St. Bernard raking in the large pot, much to the very obvious dismay of his fellow players.” 9. Not all of the Dogs Playing Poker series fit the name.The animated television series The Simpsons has made several references to the paintings, such as in " Treehouse of Horror IV" (1993) when Homer is driven to screaming insanity simply by looking at the surrealness of the painting. [7] Dogs Playing Poker, by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, refers collectively to an 1894 painting, a 1903 series of sixteen oil paintings commissioned by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars, and a 1910 painting. [1] [ 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.