Editor’s Note: Reese McKenzie contacted me by email and asked me to post this essay on my site. I was happy to oblige. If you want to do a guest post, let me know. Otherwise, enjoy this first ever guest post. (Keep in mind that the opinions here are not my own, but that of Reese McKenzie, and I may not agree with everything said in this essay.)

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know (and More) About “Dogs Playing Poker”

While no one would ever claim that the “Dogs Playing Poker” paintings are on artistic par with works like the Mona Lisa or American Gothic, they have managed to burn their own indelible mark in American culture. One of the more widely reproduced series of paintings, C.M. Coolidge’s series of nine paintings depicting dogs playing poker has been reproduced millions of times on velvet paintings, postcards, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and other items. The paintings all utilize the same theme and general approach, as far as showing various breeds of dogs in different setting and locales
playing poker, much as their human counterparts do.

Below are the titles of each of the paintings in the series

• A Bold Bluff (also titled Judge St. Bernard Stands Pat on Nothing)
• 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 (also titled Judge St. Bernard Wins on a Bluff)

Coolidge produced the paintings between 1906 and 1934 (when he died) for a calendar maker. His poker-playing dogs were designed to very representative of wealthy businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, with their dress and the locales of games pointing to an upper-crust society of canines enjoying a game of poker. Coolidge didn’t just include poker on a whim, as many of the scenes show dramatic moments in a game with certain of the dogs betting big on a complete bluff and other similar scenes.

Coolidge was an unlikely choice as far as the originator of poker playing dogs that live on today, as he was born to Quaker parents in New York and received no formal art instruction. He worked as a bookkeeper, founded a small bank, and briefly owned a drug store and a failed newspaper before he turned his hand to painting and cartoons. He’s also credited with inventing what he called Comic Foregrounds — the popular amusement park feature in which guests can insert their heads into holes of cartoonish figures to be photographed.

While his “Dogs Playing Poker” paintings are largely considered to be kitschy and less-than-serious art, in February 2005 the two original paintings of A Bold Bluff and Waterloo sold at auction for $590,400 — far above the estimated value of $30,000. The buyer was anonymous so there’s no way to know if it’s hanging in the living room of one of the many successful players at online poker sites or in a serious art collector’s collection, but it’s hard to argue the success, longevity, and appeal of dogs playing poker.

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