The Poker Game painting by Cassis Marcellus Coolidge, used for a 1903 set of Brown & Bigelow calendars, sold at a 2015 Sotheby’s art auction for $658,000. It’s one of a series of nine pictures of dogs playing poker. Millions of copies have been sold. In 2005, a pair of paintings, “A Bold Bluff” and “Waterloo,” sold for $590,400. “Only a Pair of Deuces” sold in 2008 for $193,000. The art is considered “kitsch” by art critics, but these paintings, like Norman Rockwell’s, show by the prices how popular they are. The poker playing dogs have historic value. They are in a well-furnished house, 1890s proof that poker was a family pastime, not just a gambling game played in saloons.

 

 

 

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