The 2025 winner of a $20,000 art prize has been revealed as a “blatant copy” of a 2011 painting by Archibald prize-winning Australian artist Nicholas Harding.
Lennox Head artist Jane Allan won the prize in the landscape category of The Doyles, a relatively little-known but long-running art prize held annually on the Gold Coast.
But in the same week the finalists for the 2026 award began exhibiting, award organisers released a statement decrying “a threat” from within the local art community.
“It appears as though one of last year’s winning works is an imitation of a Nicholas Harding artwork,” the statement said.
“We have no idea why this has only emerged now, but we thank our local community for once again having each other’s [and our] backs.”
Brisbane-based art dealer Philip Bacon said the award-winning artwork, titled Seascape Explorers, was a “blatant copy” of Nicholas Harding’s Two Estuary Figures, painted in 2011.
Nicholas Harding’s original artwork measured 20 x 25 centimetres and sold at auction in 2011. (Supplied: The Doyles Art Award)
“They’re exactly the same. The only difference is the scale,” Mr Bacon said.
“She [Ms Allan] has obviously just expanded it out, but the placement of the figures, the treatment of the canvas, the placement of the rocks and the sea, everything looks like the little original.”
Mr Bacon said the original painting was a minor work of the late Harding and not a well-known piece.
He said the original 20 x 25-centimetre painting sold at a 2011 auction for $14,000, so he was unsurprised that the imitation was not realised sooner.
“It’s not as if she’s made a copy of a Picasso or a Van Gogh that everybody knows,” Mr Bacon said.
Philip Bacon says Harding’s original work is not well known, but copying it is “totally unacceptable”. (ABC News)
And while Mr Bacon admitted artists often walked a fine line between influence and imitation, he said Ms Allan’s work was a clear example of the latter.
“An out-and-out copy like this — copying exactly the posture of the figures, the placement of the figures, the style and the technique — it’s pretty blatant and totally unacceptable,” he said.
Gold Coast City councillor Glenn Tozer, who sponsors The Doyles, said the award committee and judges were disappointed Ms Allan had “blatantly disregarded” the competition’s rules regarding originality.
Cr Tozer said the committee had been in contact with Ms Allan and that lawyers were discussing if it was possible to recover the prize money.
“I can’t give too much information on how that process will unfold,” he said.
“But, undoubtedly, it has been determined that the submitter of that art has not met the criteria for entry, and therefore the submission is not lawful.”
Glenn Tozer says the committee is investigating ways to avoid similar situations in the future. (ABC Gold Coast: Dominic Cansdale)
Cr Tozer defended the competition judges who did not pick up on the imitation until this year’s exhibition was already underway.
“It is a bit of a tough call to think that every judge would be able to memorise all art from the previous 20 years,” he said.
“The committee are a group of volunteers … and there isn’t the technology available to us to be able to check every piece of art as it comes in.”
He said the award committee was now investigating ways to verify the originality and authenticity of future submissions, as well as tightening up any “legal loopholes” that might exist in the submissions process.
Ms Allan has been contacted for comment.
