I found that bit here. The game portrayed was apparently played march 13, 1886. It's hard to tell if the reaction to the painting was that impressive or if that's just typical late 1800's hype. The press back then wasn't typically objective in their coverage.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rugby_pioneers/5319001671/
His website at
http://rugby-pioneers.blogs.com/rugby/ Has a lot of interesting stuff, it might be worth sending him a link. The connection seems pretty solid, and I don't think he knows about the US print.
I haven't found any info about where the original painting ended up.
I have a few of the illustrated london papers. Now I'll have to find them and go through them a bit more closely. There's even a baseball illustration to be found, and from the looks of it lots of rugby.
Steve B