Auction-topping artist Lucien Freud is known for both his brutally honest, sometimes unflattering portraits and, well, his honestly about his brutality. Or at least about having chip on his shoulder.

Now 87, Freud admitted in the 2006 book Freud at Work by Bruce Bernard, David Dawson and Sebastian Smee, "I used to have a lot of fights. It wasn't because I liked fighting, it was really just that people said things to me to which I felt the only reply was to hit them."

Next month, Sotheby's will auction a work that captures both Freud's pugnacity and that uncompromising honesty. In its Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Feb. 10 in London, the house will offer Self-Portrait With a Black Eye, which Freud executed immediately after being punched by a cab driver circa 1978. The petite painting, measuring just 7 3/8 by 5 5/8 and expected to earn £3–4 million ($4.8–6.5 million), zeroes in on the artist's face, showing only the span from his upper lip to his hairline. The left eye is ringed with the dark maroons, blues, and yellows typical of a black eye, and those colors are echoed throughout his face, which is painted in the artist's characteristically disturbed style.

The work, only the third self-portrait of the artist ever to come to auction, has been in the same private collection since it was completed. It is expected to earn £3 million to £4 million. Additional highlights of the sale include a three-meter (or ten-foot) wide Yves Klein "Fire Painting" expected to earn £2.8 million to £3.5 million and a 1995-96 Peter Doig painting estimated at £2-3 million.