In 1933 Tasmanian born artist Stephen Bransgrove was being feted as a principal prize winner at the 108th annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York City. Bransgrove was a complete unknown, so it was a huge but pleasant surprise. Apparently he had lived in Hobart until 1918, then moved to Sydney to train as an artist.
I could only find one brief mention of him in those years. In 1926 he exhibited a scene of Hobart at the Sydney Art Salon. I wonder whether Hobart on the Derwent has survived?
Source – Sydney Morning Herald, 13 Oct. 1926
It was not art, but theatre management that provided his income in Sydney and subsequently in the US, where he had resided since 1928. Of course Tasmania, and Australia as a whole, were now quick to embrace him as one of their own.
His winning painting, ‘Clydesdales’ won the Ellin Speyer prize of $300. This was awarded for a work portraying animals, particularly an act of humaneness towards them. Mrs Speyer had been a wealthy philanthropist until her death in 1921, and her will included numerous bequests.
On the strength of the prize, Bransgrove was elected to the National Academy of Design. the first Australian to be honoured in such a way.
In August he returned to Sydney, where he exhibited three paintings at the Royal Art Society’s exhibition. One was Winter Morning. Another was New England Autumn. The third was Heading South.
The trustees of the NSW Art Gallery decided that this talented, emerging Australian artist should be represented in their own collection. They decided to purchase Winter Morning for sixty guineas, described in a review of the exhibition as follows;
Stephen Bransgrove’s picture. ‘Winter Morning’, was painted in America, where the artist was a resident for some time. The chief components of the picture are a sheet of water bordered by snow-covered banks and in the middle background a screen of evergreens (pines). This is a well handled and crisply painted scene which hands together well, makes a good pattern and, generally speaking, furnishes a good descriptive design.’ (Labor Daily, Aug. 3 1934)
The rustic charm of a homestead captured in Bransgrove’s New England Autumn.
Three weeks later the sensationalist Smith’s Weekly published a headline guaranteed to catch the attention of its readers;
The paper had discovered that Bransgrove’s work Heading South was a copy. It had previously appeared as an advertisement for Maxwell House Coffee. Here are the two pictures shown side by side.
Bransgrove told Smith’s Weekly that yes, it was virtually a copy, but of his own work. He claimed to have sold the copyright of the original to Maxwell House. He said he then painted a slightly different version for the Royal Art Society show.
In the full colour Maxwell House advertisement the founder of the company, Joel Cheek, rides out with his saddle bags full of coffee samples.
Well, maybe Bransgrove could have got away with that explanation it there had been any truth in it. However, the real artist turned out to be Sundblom Haddon, world famous for his illustrations of Santa Claus used so successfully by Coca-Cola. 
Soon, everything began to unravel. It was revealed that the painting Bransgrove had won the Ellin Speyer prize with was actually a copy of a work by the Australian artist Sebastian Power. Meanwhile, New England Autumn was copied from American Antonio Cirino’s New England Homestead. The painting, Winter Morning, being purchased by the NSW Art Gallery. was the work of Walter Koeniger. The latter had been published in 1932 as the cover of Literary Digest magazine. Bransgrove had copied several of the Literary Digest’s covers and passed them off as his own, original work.
Naturally, Smith’s Weekly were making the most of the situation;
Source – Smith’s Weekly, 22 Dec. 1934)
The final unmasking of Stephen Bransgrove came in December 1934. Once again he made Australian history, though this time for a shameful reason. He was first person in 108 years to be expelled from the National Academy of Design. He was never mentioned in the Australian media again and presumably went back to America.
To read an account of the scandal by Time Magazine, CLICK HERE.
