First Bob Ross TV painting, completed in 30 minutes, goes on sale for nearly £8m
21 September 2023, 08:44
A Walk In The Woods, the first of more than 400 paintings Ross produced for his TV series The Joy Of Painting, will be sold by a Minneapolis gallery.
A painting by Bob Ross, the artist who brought painting to the people, with works completed for TV viewers in less than half an hour, is going up for sale for nearly 10 million dollars (£8.1 million).
A Walk In The Woods, the first of more than 400 paintings Ross produced on-air for his TV series The Joy Of Painting, will be sold by a Minneapolis art gallery.
“It is season one, episode one of what you would call the rookie card for Bob Ross,” Ryan Nelson, who owns the gallery, Modern Artifact, said of the work created in the show’s debut, which aired on January 11, 1983.
Growing up in a small town, Mr Nelson said he was introduced to art through Ross’s show and loves his paintings. He does not expect a quick sale given the high asking price, which he sees as an opportunity to display the painting for a larger audience.
On that first show where he painted A Walk In The Woods, Ross — sporting his perm, full beard and unbuttoned shirt — stressed that painting did not need to be pretentious.
“We have avoided painting for so long because I think all of our lives we’ve been told that you have to go to school half your life, maybe even have to be blessed by Michelangelo at birth, to ever be able to paint a picture,” Ross said. “And here, we want to show you that that’s not true. That you can paint a picture.”
Ross, who died in 1995, hosted the show from 1983 until 1994. In each episode, he would speak directly to viewers whom he encouraged to paint with him as he created idealised scenes of streams backed by mountains, waterfalls and rustic cabins and mills — all done very quickly.
“What this piece represents is the people’s artist,” Mr Nelson said. “This isn’t an institution that’s telling you that Bob Ross is great. It’s not some high-brow gallery telling you that Bob Ross is great. This is the masses, the population in the world that are saying that Bob Ross is great.”
The first season of The Joy Of Painting was filmed in Falls Creek, Virginia, and the painting from Ross’s first show was sold months later to raise funds for the local PBS station.
A volunteer at the station bought the painting for an undisclosed price and hung it in her home for 39 years until getting in touch with Mr Nelson, who has bought and sold more than 100 of Ross’s works.
Nelson bought the painting last year and then gave it a “not for sale” price of 9.85 million dollars (£7.94 million), said publicist Megan Hoffman.
Ms Hoffman said the asking price is far more than any other Ross painting has sold for, but A Walk In The Woods is unique and Mr Nelson is not looking for a quick sale. She notes that Ross’s popularity has soared in recent years, with 5.63 million subscribers to a YouTube channel featuring his shows.
“Ryan would prefer to take it out, tour it around to museums and things like that so people can enjoy it and appreciate it,” Ms Hoffman said. “He will take offers but he’s not in a hurry to sell it.”
