A Bob Ross Painting Goes Under the Hammer in Germany for the First Time

For the first time, a Bob Ross painting will be auctioned in Germany. Mountain Splendor, a 1986 work, is scheduled for sale on December 5 at Ketterer Kunst in Munich, according to ArtNews.

The painting was made live on television during season seven, episode eight of The Joy of Painting, the PBS show that made Ross, who died in 1995, a household name in the United States. It has been consigned, meaning handed over to an auction house for sale, by American Public Television (APT). All of the money raised will go to APT.

Ketterer Kunst, which calls itself Germany's leading auction house, has put an estimate of €40,000–€60,000 ($46,800–$70,200) on the work. An estimate is the range the auction house expects a work to fetch. The final figure will be the hammer price, the bid the auctioneer closes on, before fees. The sale has not yet taken place, so no result exists.

Anyone wanting to see the painting in person can do so at Ketterer Kunst showrooms in Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich between November 8 and December 4. Robert Ketterer, the owner and auctioneer, runs the company.

The sale is part of a wider effort. Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross, Inc., came up with the charitable initiative to help American public television stations. She points to what the initiative describes as $9 billion in cuts to government funding that had already been approved. Jim Dunford, CEO and president of APT, leads the network.

The idea has already been tested in the United States. In November 2025, Bonhams, the London-based auction house, sold three Bob Ross paintings in Los Angeles for more than $600,000 combined, according to NBC News. That was the first sale in a series of thirty paintings that APT offered through Bonhams. Bonhams said records were broken for Bob Ross works across the series. One painting, By-the-Sea, sold for US$140,200 including the buyer's premium, the fee buyers pay on top of the hammer price.

The money has a clear purpose. Proceeds help public TV stations pay the licence fees needed to keep programmes such as The Best of Joy of Painting on the air, PBS NewsHour has reported. For a German buyer, the auction offers a chance to own a piece of that television history without crossing the Atlantic.