Revealed: how Lucian Freud got hit by a cabbie

The London artist Lucian Freud, now 87, was well known for getting into brawls as a younger man. What was not known was that after being punched in the eye by a taxi driver in 1978, he went straight into his Holland Park studio and painted a self-portrait, never seen in public until now.

Rather than packing ice on his black eye, he went to the mirror, saw his opportunity and asked the man who was waiting for a sitting to leave so he could begin painting immediately.

Self-Portrait with a Black Eye, which was bought from the artist by the sitter he dismissed that day, is one of five Freuds due to be auctioned at Sotheby's next month. It has been given an estimate of £3m to £4m. But with any number of Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern sheiks likely to be tempted by an "unseen" Freud, it could go for a lot more.

"I used to have a lot of fights," Freud, notoriously reclusive, said once in a rare interview. "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."

It is bound to be compared with other famous "injury" self-portraits, such as Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Van Gogh and Self Portrait with Injured Eye by Francis Bacon, Freud's friend and fellow drinker.

However, it stands out as an unusual painting, not just for the circumstances of its execution, but because of its tight composition. It starts above Freud's tousled hair and stops at his top lip: the focus is entirely on his swollen left eye.

Georgina Adams, of the Arts Newspaper said: "It's a self-portrait, it's never been seen before and Freuds don't come onto the market very often. That's what will make the painting sell, not the black eye."

The Sotheby's sale on February 10 comes exactly a month before a retrospective of Freud's work opens at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. ·