The issue is reproducible using the testcase attached to 7133527.
To reproduce the problem you need to run the test on Lion (10.7.3) machine remotely through VNC. One important detail is that a user other than the one who started the VNP connection should be logged into the machine locally. Otherwise, the problem isn't reproducible event after running the test remotely.
Running with -Dsun.awt.disableCALayers=true causes the problem to disappear. So, this issue might be a bug in the CALayer support or also this might be potentially caused by some kind of limitation with VNC.