Most people know a famous painting long before they stand in front of it, from a print over a bed, a stamp, a calendar or a poster. Some of the pictures here owe their fame to those copies. At least one painter discovered what his own picture was being used for only when the proofs were carried into his studio.
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How These Were Chosen
A reproduction is any copy made to travel beyond the canvas: a print, a newspaper supplement, a postcard, a calendar, a stamp, an advertisement. Until photography and color printing, each copy had to be cut by hand into wood or metal. After them, one picture could reach millions of walls.
Printers and advertisers then looked for images that read at a glance and survived being shrunk to the size of a stamp. Several pictures on this list became famous through those copies long before most people saw the canvas.
A painting is here because its image went to work outside art, on products, stamps or posters, or because a writer, a filmmaker or another artist built a well-known work on it. No one counts reproductions, so the order is my own judgment.
12. Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, A Friend in Need (1903)
Under the edge of the poker table in A Friend in Need, a bulldog slips an ace to the dog beside him while the other players look elsewhere. The picture dates from 1903, and its painter, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, never meant it for a gallery.
Coolidge worked at the cheap end of the picture business. His dogs were a commission from Brown & Bigelow, a firm in St. Paul, Minnesota, that sold what it called remembrance advertising: calendars and small objects printed with a client's name and meant to stay in the customer's home.
For that trade the firm got sixteen dog scenes from Coolidge, and several of them put the dogs around a card table, drinking and smoking like men at a club.
The cheat in A Friend in Need was built for that use. The ace passes below the table, out of sight of every dog, and the only witness is whoever has the calendar on the wall.
At a Glance
Artist: Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (American, 1844 to 1934)
Painted: 1903
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: not published
Where to see it: Location of the original not published
About This Painting
What is the most famous image of Dogs Playing Poker?
A Friend in Need is the scene most often reproduced on its own, although it is the fourth in Coolidge's series. Copies of it turn up in bars, television shows, movies and music videos.
11. John Everett Millais, Bubbles (1886)
The boy in Bubbles, looking up at a soap bubble he has just blown, a pipe in his hand and a bowl of suds in his lap, was the grandson of John Everett Millais, who painted him in 1886 for his own pleasure. Some time later, a businessman walked into Millais's studio holding color proofs of that very picture, printed for a purpose the painter had never been asked about.