Thirty canvases, many created for viewers of Ross’s PBS series, “The Joy of Painting,” will be sold to benefit public television stations grappling with funding cuts. By Sopan Deb Whimsical clouds.

Thirty paintings created by the bushy-haired, soft-spoken Bob Ross will soon be up for auction to defray the costs of programming for public television stations suffering from cuts in federal funding.

Today the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and the BBC completed their hugely ambitious project to put online the United Kingdom’s entire collection of oil paintings in public ownership. This makes ...