Three Bob Ross Paintings Sold For $600,000 At Auction In Fundraiser For Public Television

Three Bob Ross Paintings Sold For $600,000 At Auction In Fundraiser For Public Television

Three works from Bob Ross’ classic public television show The Joy of Painting raised over half a million dollars for public television.

Having relied for decades on endowment contributions and pledge drives of every tact and description, it was brilliant idea that puts a brilliant man and his brilliant perspective on the arts back into the spotlight 30 years after his death.

“I think this actually would have been Bob’s idea,” said Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross Inc., the firm that manages his likeness, content, and collection of thousands of works that he painted on television, in advance of the auction. “And when I think about that, it makes me very proud.”

The auction came months after cuts to PBS and other stations were passed in the most recent budget, but also as a pair of Bob Ross paintings touched, and then surmounted, 6-figure valuations—something very rarely seen before.

Straight Arrow News, which spoke with Kowalski, also reached out to Bonham’s, which had seen a pair of Ross’ sold for $115,000 and $95,000.

In many ways, the gentle television painter was a singular figure; irreplicable, not only as a figure in time but also in style and method. Ross paintings have always been conspicuously absent from the fine art auction circuits, and rarely come anywhere close to these sorts of valuations.

But in light of the appreciation, Bob Ross Inc. will be auctioning Home in the Valley, (1993) Cliffside, (1990) and Winter’s Peace (1993). They were priced to start at between $25,000 – $30,000, but quickly went to the Moon.

The first brought $229,100, the second $114,800, and Winter’s Peace went for a staggering $318,000.

“I think that there’s a certain amount of snobbery in the art business, but Bob is a cultural touchstone,” Aaron Bastian, senior director of California and Western paintings at Bonhams, told Straight Arrow News.

“He crosses a lot of different generations. Kids these days have seen him on YouTube. I watched him with my parents, right? And so, it’s something that is readily accessible to everyone.”

Modern artistic stars and works commonly seek to portray the world’s challenges, contradictions, and crises, while Bob Ross, a former Air Force drill sergeant who vowed never the raise his voice again after leaving the military, sought every broadcast to create a world he wanted to see: full of ‘happy little trees,’ and all the rest.

Kowalski points out that Ross loved the idea of public television, and that he would probably have been the first to pull out some out works to put towards the cause. After all, they aren’t unique.

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While viewers saw only the canvas that Ross painted on screen over the course of the 30-minute program, that was actually the second of three renditions. One, he would do before shooting as a preparatory work that sat off camera as a reference. The second he’d do for the recorded broadcast, and a third, well-finished work with much more attention to detail than he could manage on-screen was painted for his instructional booklets.

Often, Ross would ensure the three remained together, either in his holdings at Bob Ross Inc., or in the cases when he would donate them, either to PBS or to the Smithsonian.

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All the money raised from the auction will go to Create Channel, which Straight Arrow described as a “premium lifestyle channel for public television stations.”

Another 3 works will be auctioned in January—part of a collection of 27 that could be ultimately sold to support the various channels and outlets under American Public Television.