Two Bob Ross paintings sold at auction in Cincinnati Tuesday for a combined $206,250.
"With a number of phone bidders, as well as online bidders, we are pleased with each painting having exceeded the high auction estimate," Will Sikes, partner at Caza Sikes, a gallery and fine art auction house, told WVXU after the auction. "The pair brought over $200,000 total, showing the strength of the current market for Ross works."
Artworks by the late, beloved, PBS painting pioneer rarely go up for sale.
"When you do a search in our auction database, there's only 30 or so paintings of his that have ever sold at auction, and the reason for that is most of them are either held by PBS or by the Bob Ross foundation," .
Caza Sikes auctioned two works on behalf of a client who picked them up around a decade ago in an unusual place.
"The current consignor purchased them on Craigslist roughly 10 years ago, and purchased them for far less than they are worth now, and probably far less than they will sell for, but at the time I think it was probably a fair price," Sikes explains.
The auction house has traced the paintings provenance and had both authenticated by Bob Ross, Inc. Sikes says the Craigslist seller was related to the owner of an art store in Dayton for whom the paintings were created. Sikes says Ross didn't make a lot of money doing the show for PBS, so he had sponsorships with art supply companies.
"He would go on these little tours around to the art supply stores that sold those particular items — paints, brushes, you name it — and as part of his appearances there, he would do demonstrations for the people who would come in, and then he would sell paints," Sikes says. "These paintings, they weren't painted on the show, but they were painted within those stores somewhere around Dayton."
He says that store is no longer around, but the paintings came with images of Ross in the store with the proprietor painting both of the paintings.
About the paintings
The two paintings being offered by Caza Sikes depict classic Bob Ross landscapes.
"One of them has a snowy mountain top in the far distance, with a stream that runs down, [and] a little hunting cabin. It's got all the Bob Ross staples like the happy little trees, the reflections in the stream, and a nice lemon-lit sky above the mountains. The second one is a more of an interior forested scene, also with a stream, a little bit more at dusk," Sikes says. "You've got the banks of the river, which is half frozen, and then more happy little trees and bushes off to the side.
The works include pictures of Ross doing the paintings and are signed on the back.
The inscription on the frozen stream picture — labeled in the auction catalog as Lot 1: Wooded Landscape with Stream — reads, "To Jan, A very special friend. Happy Painting. Bob Ross."
The inscription on the painting with the cabin — labeled in the auction catalog as Lot 2: Mountain Landscape — reads, "To Jan, Best wishes to a special friend. Happy Painting. Bob Ross, 1987."
Both were listed with opening bids of $24,000 and estimated selling prices of $50,000 to $75,000. The first ended up selling for $81,250 and the second for $125,000, according to Sikes.
"They'll be up for bidding to people from all over the world," Sikes previously saed, adding, "We expect them to go much higher based on recent comparable results."
The auction is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Sept. 15. The works are currently on display in the Caza Sikes gallery in Oakley.
Legacy and scarcity
Though his show ended in 1994, Ross' legacy endures, and has seen a resurgence since the COVID pandemic. Reruns of The Joy of Painting still air on PBS stations and many people began tuning back in in 2020 when they were stuck at home and needed something to lift their spirits. Ross' soft voice and "happy little trees" were just the balm many people needed.
Since then, prices for his works began increasing, Sikes says. Though, again, they don't often come up for sale.
Last year's federal cuts to public broadcasting prompted a change that might be part of what's driving prices for Ross's works.
In November, American Public Television began auctioning the first of 30 Bob Ross paintings, with the proceeds going to support public television. The first three sold (separately) for a total of $662,000, setting an auction record for Bob Ross paintings. In January, three more paintings sold, beating that record, for nearly $1.3 million.
Ross filmed more than 400 episodes of his show from 1982 to 1994, creating more than a thousand paintings — he did three for every half-hour episode: one before the show to use as a referenced; the one painted during filming; and a third after the show to be used for instructional books, according to NPR.
In 1991, Ross told the New York Times he'd created some 30,000 paintings over his lifetime. He never sold or displayed them. Bob Ross, Inc., which won a legal battle over the artist's assets after his death, estimates it has a little over 1,100 paintings created during the show's run. They're stored in the company's offices in Herndon, Va.
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