English artist L S Lowry's painting of cricket match fetches over 10 crore at Sotheby's sale

English artist L S Lowry's depiction of a backstreet cricket match in England's Salford area, sold for over Rs 10 crore at a Sotheby's auction in London. The sale comes amidst the cricket frenzy owing to the World Cup underway in England.

Painted in 1938, "A Cricket Match" shows Lowry's artistic finesse at its best. He gives children the centre stage, both as enthusiastic players and spectators. "It is a counterpoint to the burdensome life of the adults and their dilapidated surroundings," Sotheby's said in a statement.

The painting that featured in the auction house's Modern & Post-War British Art Evening Sale earlier this week, appeared on the market for the first time since it sold at Sotheby's in June 1996 for Rs 2.49 crore. Other highlights at the auction included two definitive Modern British works by Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson.

One of Moore's "most tender" and worked drawings during the Second World War, "Shelter Drawing: Seated Mother and Child" (1941) sold for Rs 7.56 crore. The work had previously been featured in the artist's major retrospective at Tate Britain in 2010. Making its auction debut, Nicholson's stellar modernist re-telling of the still-life brought Rs 5.65 crore. Inspired by the Synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Braque, a period in the Cubism art movement, Nicholson gives the work a British twist through his palette of greens, blues and pinks. Auction records were also achieved for Pop Art pioneer Peter Phillips and St Ives Modernist John Wells.

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