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Dogs Playing Poker

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Poker Game, oil on canvas, 1894

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.

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".[2]

The first painting, Coolidge's 1894 Poker Game, sold for $658,000 at a 2015 auction.[3]

Coolidge paintings

Pinched with Four Aces (1903)
A Friend in Need (1903)
Poker Sympathy (1903)
Sitting up with a Sick Friend (c. 1905)
A Waterloo, 1906

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)[4]
  • 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)[4]

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.[4]

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.[5] The previous top price for a Coolidge was $74,000.[6] In 2015, Poker Game sold for $658,000, currently the highest price paid for a Coolidge.

  • In the TV sitcom Cheers, Sam Malone likes the paintings (in particular one of Dogs Playing Blackjack), while his lover, Diane Chambers, hates them. Sam says that he sees something new every time he looks at it.
  • The cover of the 1981 album, Moving Pictures by Rush, features A Friend in Need as one of the three pictures being moved.
  • In the 1984 play The Foreigner, a character complains that she doesn't want to be in her motel room because there is a "Damn picture on the wall of some dogs playin' poker."
  • 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]
  • The music video for Snoop Dogg's 1993 song, "What's My Name", depicts dogs playing craps while smoking cigars and wearing sunglasses.
  • In the 1994 "School Daze" episode of Living Single Overton brings a print of A Bold Bluff into art class and comments on the "obviousness" of the bulldog's bluff.
  • Dogs Playing Poker TV ads were aired during ESPN Sunday Night Football during the 1998 and 1999 NFL seasons.
  • 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".
  • In the 1999 film The Thomas Crown Affair, Banning believes she finds a stolen Claude Monet painting in Crown's house. On expert examination it turns out to be a fake painted over a copy of Poker Sympathy, a Dogs Playing Poker canvas.
  • In a 2000 episode of the TV series That '70s Show, "Hunting", Dogs Playing Poker is parodied by the characters taking the places of the dogs.
  • In an episode of Animaniacs, a young Pablo Picasso's artistic frustration is demonstrated by his producing a DPP painting.
  • In an episode of White Collar, art expert and main character Neal Caffrey jokes about hanging a DPP on a wall.
  • In an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog, Courage goes into a DPP painting and picks up an untouched card hand. He laughs and puts it down, which shocks the other dogs upon seeing that the hand is a royal flush. Courage is then kicked out of the painting by one of the dogs.
  • In the 2005 Suite Life of Zack and Cody episode "Hotel Inspector", London tells Maddie that she saw a painting of dogs playing poker, and that she wants Maddie to throw her dog a poker-themed party. When Maddie tells her the dogs weren't really playing poker, London replies, "If they weren't playing poker, then how did the dalmatian win all the money?"
  • 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 the 2006 film Barnyard, there is a scene with some dogs from the farm playing poker while a mouse paints A Friend in Need while watching them.
  • In the 2009 film Up, a recreation of the series with the dogs from the movie is briefly shown.
  • In the TV series Boy Meets World, Eric is cleaning out the garage when he finds one of the Dogs Playing Poker paintings, and shows his parents.
  • In the 2016 film, The Accountant, the paintings are discussed by the lead characters. Later, a copy of A Friend in Need is used as a cover to hide a Jackson Pollock painting.
  • In the 2020 Ray Donovan season seven episode "Passport and a Gun", Jim Sullivan rewards young Ray for his successful debut as a debt collector with a valued and framed copy of A Friend in Need.
  • In the 2022 Bodog made a series of Poker Masterclasses called Pokerdogs. [8]
  • In the 2022 film Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, during the montage showing where Puss loses eight of his nine lives, he is shown cheating in a card game with some dogs playing poker, which gets him presumably mauled by the angry pack.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Dogs Playing Poker". Ooo Woo – Complete Dog Resource. 2008. Archived from the original on April 11, 2017. Retrieved September 1, 2006.
  2. ^ Ferrara, Annette (April 2008). "Lucky Dog!". Ten by Ten Magazine. Chicago: Tenfold Media. Archived from the original on March 27, 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2006.
  3. ^ "That Dogs Playing Poker Painting Just Sold for Over $650,000". GQ.
  4. ^ a b c McManus, James. "Play It Close to the Muzzle and Paws on the Table", The New York Times (December 3, 2005).
  5. ^ "A New York auction offers artistic treats for dog lovers", San Jose Mercury News (Feb 11, 2005).
  6. ^ "'Dogs Playing Poker' sell for $590K". CNN Money. February 16, 2005. Retrieved September 11, 2006.
  7. ^ "Dogs Playing Poker in the Simpsons — DogsPlayingPoker.org". www.dogsplayingpoker.org.
  8. ^ "'Pokerdogs'". Bodog (in Portuguese). 30 June 2022. Archived from the original on 2023-02-03. Retrieved 2023-01-20.

Further reading

  • Harris, Maria Ochoa. "It's A Dog's World, According to Coolidge", A Friendly Game of Poker (Chicago Review Press, 2003).
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