Last week, one of Cassius Marcellus Coolidge‘s very well-known painting of dogs playing poker, aptly called “Poker Game” (pictured), sold for $658,000. It was finished in 1894 and measures 41 inches by 50 inches. The masterpiece sold through the auction house Sotheby’s and fetched (pun intended) more than anticipated.

According to information relayed by Sotheby’s, “It was after a trip to Europe in 1873 that [Coolidge] turned up in Rochester, New York as the portraitist of dogs whose lifestyle mirrored the successful middle-class humans of his time.”

The works came a century after the English writer Samuel Johnson famously proclaimed, “I would rather see a portrait of a dog that I know than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.” Coolidge produced a series of paintings about dogs playing poker, one of which is “Poker Game.”

An American Heritage Magazine article heralded the legacy that “Poker Game” and paintings from Coolidge (pictured) like it have had: “His dogs fit with amazing ease into such human male phenomena as the all-night card game, the commuter train, and the ball park. His details of expression, clothing, and furniture are precise. Uncannily, the earnest animals resemble people we all know, causing distinctions of race, breed, and color to vanish and evoking the sentiment on an old Maryland gravestone: ‘MAJOR Born a Dog Died a Gentleman.'”

In 2005, the Coolidge paintings “A Bold Bluff” and “Waterloo,” also in the dogs playing poker genre, sold for $590,000 total. A representative for the auction house told CNN at the time that an array of suitors were interested in the piece: “A lot of people came to speculate on the piece, a lot of whom were outside our traditional area of collectors. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.” That sale was two years after Chris Moneymaker made history in the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Sotheby’s had estimated that “Poker Game” would fetch $400,000 to $600,000 at auction.

Want the latest poker headlines and interviews? Follow PocketFives on Twitterand Like PocketFives on Facebook.