India, Aug. 14 -- For a man who painted the human body with such visceral detail - nude, overweight, old, sagging skin, blotchy colouring, awkward poses - Lucian Freud's Self-Portrait with Hyacinth in Pot, painted in 1947-48, cuts a rather handsome figure.

The sketch, unlike his paintings, is a flat two-dimensional view of the 25-year-old artist's face wearing a contemplative look. His coat and hair are remarkably well-detailed, as are the hyacinths growing out of a pot behind the artist. If his paintings present us with what can only be described as the essential ugliness of the human form and condition, this work lends no hint of it. In Freud's universe, this man - he, himself - is remarkably plain.

Contrast this with Freud's later et...