Bob Ross paintings to hit auction block as fundraiser for APT’s Create

American Public Television is about to get a boost from a bunch of happy little trees. 

The distributor announced last week that Bonhams will auction over 30 Bob Ross paintings over the next three years, with proceeds helping to alleviate licensing fees stations pay for APT’s Create multicast channel. Ross painted many of the pieces on his long-running series, The Joy of Painting. 

Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross Inc., says she conceived the idea for the sale after Bonhams sold two other privately held Ross paintings for around $100,000 each in August. Though Ross’s paintings have been sold in private sales and person-to-person for years, Kowalski says she found the amount the Bonhams pieces went for “very shocking,” which prompted her to act.

“My head started ticking away, like, ‘Well, this many paintings would equal this much, and this many paintings would equal this much,’” says Kowalski. “I got on the phone to APT and I said, ‘What would be a good ballpark figure for how much you need, based on different things you could do for stations that would help them out for a sustained period of time?’ They came back with some figures and I said, ‘I think I have a way we could raise some of that,’ and everything just fell into place.” 

This is the first time Bob Ross Inc. will sell pieces from its archive of more than 1,000 Ross works. The first auction will take place Nov. 11 at Bonhams’ California & Western Art auction in Los Angeles, where three pieces — 1990’s “Cliffside” and two 1993 pieces, “Winter’s Peace” and “Home In The Valley” — will hit the block.

The latter two pieces, which Ross painted on air, have been given auction estimates between $30,000 and $50,000, while “Cliffside,” which was done for one of Ross’ instructional books, is estimated to draw between $25,000 and $45,000. 

The remaining 27 paintings will go to auction over the next couple of years in American painting auctions scheduled in New York, Boston and other cities. Bonhams says it will release the paintings over time to avoid flooding the market, which would affect values for the works on auction and in private collections as well.

‘Real partnership’ with APT

Bonhams says the first three paintings are drawing a lot of interest from both the public and collectors. The auction house is already getting many requests for additional photos and condition reports, says Bonhams Skinner GM Robin Starr. 

“We’ve even had a couple of collecting institutions reach out to ask about what the other paintings might look like,” so they can decide where to direct their bids, Starr said. “We’re planning on offering a variety of styles across the sales, from seascapes to traditional mountain views to some vignette pieces [Ross] did, though, because we want collectors to have the chance to pick out their favorite.” 

Starr and Kowalski also want to ensure that the auction earns the maximum amount for APT, which has distributed The Joy of Painting from its beginnings in the early 1980s. Kowalski says Bob Ross Inc. has always felt a “real partnership” with APT and that she’s learned enough about public television funding over the years to see that the best way to apply sale proceeds is to “start at the top of the pyramid and let [the money] flow down.” 

APT President Jim Dunford says he plans to apply the proceeds similarly by lowering the total amount of licensing fees owed by stations, thus giving every station — small- and large-market alike — a uniform discount.

“There’s a calendar to invoicing, and so we have to start re-signing our stations up for Create before we know what the final amount will be,” Dunford says. “But the good news is that we know the auction is happening, so we’ll be able to come back to stations with totals after that.” 

What would Bob do?

While Dunford admits that the sales might not solve public media’s funding problems in the long run, he hopes they’ll at least help stations invest in local educational programming rather than APT licensing fees. He also hopes it will help stations and individuals alike think of new ways to fundraise, including ideas that might push the boundaries of who might be traditionally considered a public television donor.

Kowalski agrees. “There are some people who wouldn’t give to public television but who have been craving a Bob Ross painting for years and years,” she says. “It’s the number-one most requested thing we get [at Bob Ross Inc.] when we answer phone calls and emails. With this sale, I think we’re teetering between two islands of fans and trying to grab everybody.” 

And Kowalski thinks Ross, who died in 1995, would have approved of the sale. “People are saying this is definitely something Bob would have done, and anytime we can hit the nail on the head just perfectly like that is a win,” Kowalski says. “Bob felt grateful that public television gave him the opportunity to make his show very intimate, where he felt he could just talk to one viewer rather than having third-party support. He thought that was the DNA of public television, and that was always how he wanted to do his show.”

Depending on how these paintings do at auction, even more could hit the market. Kowalski says she’ll be watching the gavels fall “with a big, big, big bucket of popcorn” in her lap and that she’s absolutely open to another round of auctions in the future. 

“The way people have responded to it has been so amazing,” she says. “With our archives, we can still do Bob Ross exhibits in museums and do these types of donations, too. We just want these paintings out there so that the whole world can see them.”