Cassius Marcellus Coolidge was born on 18 September 1844 and lived until 13 January 1934. He was born in America, New York, in the town Antwerp and grew up in Philadelphia. His family was known as Quaker farmers. Coolidge reportedly had several jobs before he started working as an artist, although he did not formally train as one. This was during his 20s; he moved from the farm during the 1860s. One of his first artistic jobs was as a cartoonist for a newspaper, although he also did work as an illustrator. He also started what is known as “comic foregrounds”. In 1903, he started working for Brown & Bigelow, which was the start of his Dogs Playing Poker series. Not much is known about Coolidge, whose nickname was “Kash”. He was an obscure artist and often ridiculed for his art, but nonetheless, art was his passion.