Picasso’s Femme nue couchée was the top lot at Sotheby’s Modern evening auction in New York last night. It made $67.5 million in a sale which realised $408.5 million. This was the third highest total for an auction at Sotheby’s. Monet’s view of the Grand Canal in Venice with Santa Maria della Salute made $56.6 million and The Glade by Paul Cezanne made $41.6 million. There were artists records for Milton Avery’s The Letter ($6.1 million) Leonora Carrington’s The Garden of Paracelsus ($3.3 million) and Jared French’s The Double ($1.1 million) and Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 59 ($1.2 million) set an auction record for a work on paper by the artist.