Master Art

The blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides) is a large lizard native to Australia, and is also found in the Babar and Tanimbar island groups in Indonesia. Disntiguished by a pattern of dark brown bands in overlapping scales on its body and a long, bright blue tongue, the lizard is the largest member of the skink family, and can measure up to 60 centimetres in length. This particular lizard, almost certainly painted by Van den Berg at the Amsterdam zoo, is likely to have been of the subspecies known as the Tanimbar blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua scincoides chimaera), found in the islands of the Maluku province of the-then Dutch colony of Indonesia.

The present sheet can be related to a woodcut by Willem van den Berg of a similar subject, which is dated 1920.