What Happened to the 1200 Paintings Painted by Bob Ross? The Mystery Has Finally Been Solved

Very few artists enjoy the degree of recog­ni­tion that’s been con­ferred upon the late tele­vi­sion edu­ca­tor Bob Ross, though sales of his work hov­er around zero.

It’s not due to scarci­ty. Ross pumped out three near­ly-iden­ti­cal paint­ings per episode of his series, The Joy of Paint­ing (watch them online here). That’s 403 episodes over the course of 31 sea­sons on pub­lic television—or 1209 can­vas­es of clouds, moun­tains, and “hap­py lit­tle trees.”

Shouldn’t eco­nom­ics dic­tate that these would have only increased in val­ue fol­low­ing their creator’s untime­ly death from lym­phoma in 1995?

A hand­ful have been donat­ed to the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um Of Amer­i­can His­to­ry’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. Leav­ing those aside, why are there no Bob Ross­es fetch­ing high prices on the auc­tion block?

Is the painter’s leg­endary hyp­not­ic appeal a fac­tor? Did he sub­con­scious­ly manip­u­late even the most cut­throat col­lec­tors into a state of sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment where­in prof­it mat­ters not a jot?

As The New York Times-pro­duced video above points out, Ross’ great mis­sion in life was to get oth­ers painting—quickly and joy­ful­ly.

Which is not to say he blithe­ly tossed the fruits of his labor into the incin­er­a­tor after that pur­pose had been served.

The rea­son Ross’ paint­ings aren’t on the mar­ket is they’re neat­ly stacked in card­board car­tons at Bob Ross Inc. in Hern­don, Vir­ginia. It hard­ly con­sti­tutes archival stor­age, but the box­es are neat­ly num­bered, and every­thing is account­ed for.

And that is where they’re like­ly to remain, accord­ing to exec­u­tive assis­tant Sarah Strohl and pres­i­dent Joan Kowal­s­ki, the daugh­ter of Ross’ long­time busi­ness part­ner. (Her moth­er, Annette is Ross’ for­mer stu­dent and the fore­most authen­ti­ca­tor of his work.)

For now, if any­one endeav­ors to sell you a Bob Ross orig­i­nal, it’s safe to assume it’s a fake.

Bet­ter yet, paint your own. Bob Ross Inc. tends to both the master’s rep­u­ta­tion and his lucra­tive off-screen busi­ness, sell­ing instruc­tion­al books and paint­ing sup­plies.

Be fore­warned, though, it’s won’t be as easy as the ever-placid mas­ter made it seem. Have a look at these come­di­ans scram­bling to keep up with his moves for the Bob Ross Chal­lenge, a fundrais­er for the Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety.

Ross, of course, nev­er broke a sweat on cam­era, which lends a bit of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance to the Times’ video’s fre­net­ic edit­ing. (I nev­er thought I’d have to issue a seizure warn­ing for some­thing Bob Ross-relat­ed, but those can­vas­es flash by awful­ly quick­ly at the 1:09 mark and again at 10:36. )

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Watch 13 Come­di­ans Take “The Bob Ross Chal­lenge” & Help Raise Mon­ey for The Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Sep­tem­ber 9 for the kick off of anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.