Cassius Marcellus Coolidge

American artist, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1934), who was well know for his paintings of dogs playing poker. Although he's most famous for his anthropomorphized dog paintings, Cassius Coolidge also founded a bank, drug stores, a newspaper, and invented the life-sized carnival figure cutouts with holes to insert faces thereby transforming people into muscle men, pin-up beauties and other characters. His series of 16 dog paintings were originally created for the advertising firm Brown & Bigelow as part of an emerging concept at the time -branding or "remembrance advertising".