Step 1 : Introduction to the question "Who is the artist behind the famous painting of "Dogs Playing Poker"?"
...Thanks to Dogs Playing Poker, painter Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (a.k.a. C.M. Coolidge) has earned the distinction of being called "the most famous American artist you’ve never heard of." Dogs Playing Poker refers to not just one painting, but a series of 18! The series includes the artist’s original Poker Game (1894) painting, along with 16 other oil paintings commissioned in 1903 to advertise cigars, and an additional 1910 painting. All 18 paintings in the series feature anthropomorphized dogs, but the eleven in which dogs are seated around a card table have become well known as examples of kitsch art in home decoration.