Two Surinam or Amazonian horned frogs (Ceratophrys cornuta)

The bestiary of the untypical Austrian artist, Aloïs Zötl, is highly varied. The sale of one hundred and fifty watercolours from the artist’s studio included some six drawings of animals from the amphibian family (Hôtel Drouot sale, Paris, 19 December 1955, lots 39-44), which did not however include this piece. Even when painting animals of which he had direct visual experience, the artist drew his inspiration from existing iconography, for example, engraved illustrations from natural history treatises (G. Mariotti, Le bestiaire d’Aoys Zötl (1831-1887), Milan, 1979, p.15). A similar watercolour of two frogs in an aquatic landscape is held in a private collection (V. Francès, Contrées de Aloys Zötl, Paris, 2011, pp. 72-73, ill). These two Amazonian or Surinamese frogs (with the female in the foreground and the male in the background), are approximately fifteen to twenty centimeters long, carnivorous, and eat prey including lizards, small frogs, and other mammals.