Bob Ross’s canvas from the first ‘The Joy of Painting’ episode hits the market for $9.85m

The work that American artist Bob Ross accomplished on air through the first episode of his hit tv programme The Pleasure of Portray has been put up on the market for a whopping $9.85m, a determine the gallery promoting it calls a “not-for-sale quantity,” as they plan to take the work on tour.

Ross hosted The Pleasure of Portray, an tutorial artmaking sequence that aired on American public broadcaster PBS from 1983 to 1994. Over greater than 400 episodes, Ross confirmed viewers how he painted largely nature and panorama scenes, and he grew to become fashionable for his calm demeanor and inspiring catchphrases like, “We do not make errors, simply glad little accidents.” (He additionally famously preferred to color “glad little timber” and “glad little clouds”.)

Whereas Ross produced tens of hundreds of work earlier than his demise in 1995, his work hardly ever seems at public sale. The overwhelming majority of the work Ross made for The Pleasure of Portray stay saved within the workplaces of Bob Ross Inc., the corporate that controls Ross’s mental property, which doesn’t plan on promoting the works.

However Fashionable Artifact, a gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota—which has offered a number of Ross work which have appeared in the marketplace—not too long ago put A Stroll within the Woods (1983), from the programme’s first episode, up on the market. The portray was beforehand owned by a lady who volunteered on the PBS station the place The Pleasure of Portray was filmed, based on Fashionable Artifact. She had received it in an public sale to help the station, and she or he offered it to Fashionable Artifact final yr, the gallery mentioned. Fashionable Artifact has put it up on the market for a staggering $9.85m, however with the understanding that the portray could not fetch a bidder at such a excessive value.

“We’re seeing an enormous demand for his authentic works, that are onerous to come back by,” Fashionable Artifact’s Ryan Nelson mentioned in an announcement. “It’s onerous to place a price on the piece given the motion, the recognition and the truth that that is the very first on-air portray on The Pleasure of Portray. If somebody have been to make a seven-figure supply, we might, in fact, think about that. Till then, we plan to tour this Bob Ross portray that began all of it.”

The primary-ever episode of The Pleasure of Portray, through which Ross paints A Stroll within the Woods, may be considered in its entirety on YouTube. Among the many many pop-culture references to Ross and his present through the years, the artist not too long ago impressed a personality performed by actor Owen Wilson within the movie Paint, launched earlier this yr.