A highlight of Sotheby’s Modern & Post-War British Art Evening Sale, the painting was offered alongside beautiful examples by some of the century’s most significant artists. Among the top lots were two definitive Modern British works by Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson. One of Henry Moore’s most tender and worked drawings during the Second World War, Shelter Drawing: Seated Mother and Child circa 1941 sold for £855,000 / $1,118,853. The work had previously been featured in the artist’s major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2010. Making its auction debut, Ben Nicholson’s stellar modernist re-telling of the still-life brought £639,000 / $836,195. Inspired by the Synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Braque, Nicholson gives the elegant work a British twist through his palette of greens, blues and pinks.