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Lot Essay
'Two heads emerge from the highly-polished boots of their respective owners, which face each other. They are finished portraits of Skeffington and Montagu Mathew, inseparables. Skeffington's boot is a tessled Hessian; its pointed toe rests on the foot of Mathew's spurred top-boot...Skeffington's dark hair is short, falling over his forehead; he has a large whisker. Mathew's fair hair is long and powdered and tied by a ribbon at the tips; he has a small whisker. Round the two boots are grouped blacking materials..the excellence of the portraits is noted, with the mania of the pair for strolling up and down St. James's Street in highly polished boots.' (M. D. George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, Vol. VIII, p. 39)