This Is What The Last 12 Months Of Bob Ross' Life Were Like

Although he loved to share his happy trees, clouds, hills, etc. with his legions of faithful viewers, Bob Ross kept his personal life mostly to himself. He wasn't big on interviews. He liked to show people how to paint landscapes and then return to his comfortable obscurity. And this characteristic led him to keep a secret from his fans and the rest of the public over the last few years of his life. According to the Orlando Sentinel, after his death in 1995, a spokeswoman for his company, Bob Ross Inc., said in a statement that the happy-go-lucky artist had been struggling with lymphoma for years. Still, his viewers had to suspect something when they were forced to watch reruns instead of new paintings. 

Little did they know, during the last 12 months of his life, Bob Ross was locked in a heated legal battle with the business partners with whom he had founded Bob Ross, Inc. According to The Daily Beast, when his cancer returned, Annette and Walk Kowalski pressured Bob to sign over all the rights of his likeness to the company. The painter amended his will in an attempt to thwart their move to shift his estate away from his family, but some fancy legal finagling after his death allowed the Kowalskis to create an empire of Bob Ross-themed merchandise. They got rich, while Bob's family received nothing. Protecting his estate from them may have been Bob's motivation for marrying his third wife, Lynda.