Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's painting "Poker Game" (finished in 1894) went under the hammer last week for an astonishing $658,000! Coolidge (1844-1934) became a well-known artist thanks to his paintings of dogs playing poker, which mirrored the successful middle-class humans of his time.
Some of his other artwork in the same genre have also been sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, including "A Bold Bluff" and "Waterloo" that were sold for a total of $590,400 in February, 2005.
"Coolidge's first customers were cigar companies, who printed copies of his paintings for giveaways. His fortunes rose when he signed a contract with the printers Brown & Bigelow, who turned out hundreds of thousands of copies of his dog-genre subjects as advertising posters, calendars, and prints," Sotheby's auction house, who sold the painting, stated on its website.
More information about the painting here
