New Record Price for Bob Ross Painting Supports Public Media
It’s the first time a Bob Ross painting passed one million dollars at auction, but not the first time one raised funds for public media.
Just weeks after the price for a Bob Ross painting reached a new high ($318,000 for Winter’s Peace at Bonhams), the record has been smashed again. Cabin at Sunset, which Ross painted during an episode of the 10th season of The Joy of Painting, sold for $1.04 million at an online auction that concluded on November 24.
The auction was held on the online platform GiveSmart by comedian John Oliver, host of the Emmy Award-winning television show Last Week Tonight, to benefit the Public Media Bridge Fund. According to Variety, the auction total came to “nearly $1.54 million,” which will support public radio and television stations after funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was cut in July.
Oliver announced the auction at the end of a segment on the role of public media during the November 16 episode of Last Week Tonight. While the segment acknowledged the educational programs that public media is known for, including a clip of Ross’s The Joy of Painting, it emphasized the importance of local news and radio stations, especially in rural areas.
Bob Ross, Inc., donated Cabin at Sunset to Oliver’s auction. The company had previously auctioned three of Ross’s paintings through the November 11 “California and Western Art” auction at Bonhams, raising over $600,000 for public media, including the previously mentioned former record price. On November 20, online publication LateNighter reported that bids for the painting had already reached $1 million. Ultimately, the painting received 35 bids.
Although none reached the heights of the Bob Ross painting, Oliver’s auction offered several bizarre props that appeared in previous episodes of the satirical program. Other high prices included $21,000 for a boxer’s protector that actor Russel Crowe wore in the 2005 film Cinderella Man (which Last Week Tonight purchased at a 2018 auction of Crowe’s private collection by Sotheby’s Australia; in return, Crowe named a koala veterinary clinic after Oliver) and $11,111 for an enormous prop cabbage that Oliver married (yes, married) in a Last Week Tonight segment from 2022 about the absurdity of AI-generated images.
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