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Cassius Marcellus Coolidge

Born September 18th, 1844 in Antwerp, New York and died January 13th, 1934, Coolidge (aka Kash Koolidge) was an American artist, best known for his series of paintings "Dogs Playing Poker". He often signed his work Kash Koolidge in the 20th century for comic effect. Coolidge was born to abolitionist Quaker farmers, and was raised near Philadelphia, New York. Like many American painters, he had almost no formal training as an artist.

Coolidge left the family farm in the early 1860s and struggled to find permanent work. Between 1868 and 1872 he worked as a druggist and a sign painter, at one point founded a bank and also a newspaper, before eventually moving to Rochester, NY, where he started painting dogs in human situations. His art career began during the 1860s/70s with a small gig making cartoons for a local newspaper.

Coolidge is credited with creating "comic foregrounds," which are novelty photographs wherein the sitter held a canvas in front of them and Coolidge drew or painted a caricature version of their body on the canvas. This was then photographed to create the final portrait. This later morphed into pre-painted foregrounds on wood with holes that people could place their heads in to create the illusion that they are the caricatures, which became a popular thing to do at midways, carnivals and amusement parks.

His most famous paintings are "Poker Game", an oil on canvas work done in 1894 depicting dogs playing poker, and a series of similar paintings he made afterwards due to the initial success of the first painting.

The advertising firm Brown & Bigelow liked his 1894 painting so much they hired him in 1903 to produce a series of paintings featuring dogs playing poker and other activities, which they used for printing comical calendars and similar items. From 1903 to the mid-1910s, Coolidge created a series of sixteen oil paintings for the advertising firm, all featuring anthropomorphic dogs, including nine paintings of Dogs Playing Poker, a motif that Coolidge is credited with inventing.