Synopses & Reviews
They are true-blue Americana, going way beyond Elvis on black velvet. And though few can conjure up the name of the painter who gave the world A Bold Bluff, Pinched with Four Aces, and his masterpiece, A Friend in Need, his dogs--those oh-so-serious dogs playing poker--are populist icons. The great predecessor to anthropomorphizing artists like William Wegman and Thierry Poncelet, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge created the perfect bachelor's world--poker showdowns, smoky taverns, baseball games, and a New Year's Eve revelry--filled with a hail-fellow-well-met camaraderie. Except all the fellows were dogs. Through the early part of the century and into the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of copies of his dog-genre paintings were used in advertising posters, calendars, and prints. The flip side: in 1998, Sotheby's sold a Coolidge original for $74,000. Now, in a fresh format and reproduced with impeccable attention to detail and design, comes the Dogs Playing Poker Calendar for 2004. Here are 12 Coolidges, each exerting its wonderful, unexpected mix of humor, fantasy, and nostalgia. It's the perfect gentleman's gift.