Dogs Playing Poker: An Informational Vignette

As an avid fan of all things poker, I love to see the game show up in pop culture and collectible knick-knacks. Friends at my home table know me to have collected a wide variety of card decks ranging from the native spiders of Hawaii to the the glaciers of Whistler Mountain in Vancouver, BC. However, one popular poker collectable has grated me for far too long; that infamous painting, Dogs Playing Poker.

As previously mentioned, I like poker. And though I haven’t mentioned it before, I also like dogs. It stands to reason that I should like things involving dogs and poker, but this image has always been an exception. It always struck me as tacky, and far too overvalued. It shows up on posters, ties, coffee mugs, and every irrelevant place it could rear its jowly mug. So when someone asked me to write an article about it, I wasn’t too thrilled. At least, not until I did a little research. In retrospect, I may have been judging too harshly.

First and foremost, Dogs Playing Poker isn’t the name of a painting, it's the name of a series of paintings. The one that we all picture when we think of as Dogs Playing Poker is actually called A Friend in Need. This oneis generally considered the most popular one, and it is the one most likely to be found plastered on collectables and decor. There are a total of sixteen paintings in the series, and in spite of the name, it actually includes pictures of dogs enjoying a number of other playful activities like football, pool, and ballroom dancing.

The series of paintings was created by C.M. Coolidge way back in 1903 for the advertising company Brown & Bigelow. Apparently, the paintings were not intended initially as art, but instead were commissioned for a series of advertising promotions. Many thousands of prints were made of the 16 and they were handed out as free goodies for people buying cigars. Brown & Bigelow, being primarily a poster and calendar company, made sure to recreate the images by the truckload for these mediums as well.

While popular for their uniqueness in their own time, the pictures didn’t gain real popularity until the 1970s, long after Coolidge’s death. At the time, a retro movement was growing among home decor and this included a desire for all things kitschy, gaudy, and tacky. The Dogs Playing Poker series with its massive collection of every of prints, its retro color schemes, and its classic imagery was perfect for this sweeping trend. Prices on the old prints reached a small premium, but the images were so readily reproducible that there was never a real shortage.

The series of paintings would never escape its association with cheap reproducibility and retro-sentiment. Critics would berate them for years and supposedly, Coolidge’s own family members were never fans. That being said, as recently as 2005, a pair of the original paintings, A Bold Bluff and Waterloo sold together for for $590,400. What really gets me is my own flaw in assuming these were originally intended as serious art. I had always written them off because of their blunt over-exposure. Knowing now that they were originally meant for cheap advertising, I find it endearing, albeit silly, that they have become such an ingrained part of American art history. I can’t fault something intended to be cheap for being cheap, but I can give credit for something cheap becoming so much more. After all, those dogs and I have something in common, we both enjoy a good hand of cards.