This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

Odds are really good that you probably don't immediately recognize the name of the artist that we're talking about today,

but they are just about equally good that you have seen his work. He is sometimes called, and I love this,

the dog world's Michelangelo.

Although there's another artist who will get invoked later,

but Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's most well-known art

is the Dogs Playing Poker series.

But even with that, those paintings often get misnamed.

We'll talk about that.

But he also contributed, and in one case patented,

other types of art that have become common throughout the world.

He really was a true Renaissance man.

He was interested in a lot of different things and in using his creativity across a variety of disciplines.

So I thought he would be fun to talk about today.

So Cassius Marcellus Coolidge was born on September 18th, 1844, in between Antwerp, New York, and Philadelphia,

New York.

So Antwerp was, still is, a very tiny town, and it's often referenced by its larger neighbor to the southwest, which is Watertown.

His farmer parents, Nathan and Martha Coolidge, were Quakers.

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