Dog Paintings fetch pretty penny at N.Y. auction

From The Enterprise NewsMedia
(Greater Taunton, Massachusetts):
Wed., Feb 16, 2005

" A pair of paintings from the famed series depicting dogs playing poker sold for $590,400 at auction on Tuesday.

The winning bid set a new auction record for artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, whose previous top sale was $74,000 for a painting at a Sotheby's auction in 1999, said Alan Fausel, director of paintings at Doyle New York, which handled the Tuesday sale.
The winning bidder was a private collector from New York.
The two works - "A Bold Bluff" and "Waterloo"- were among 16 paintings Coolidge was commissioned to create for Brown & Bigelow, a St. Paul, Minn.-based advertising company, in 1903. Of the 16, nine, including the two sold Tuesday, are of dogs playing poker.
The two works sold Tuesday capture moments in a poker game played by five dogs, among them a St.Bernard that ends up collecting the pot on a bluff. Doyle had estimated that the two paintings would bring in between $30,000 and $50,000.
The sale was part of Doyle's annual "Dogs in Art" auction, which coincides with the Westminster Kennel Club dog show."

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