Sotheby's in London brought in £23 million ($37 million) on Thursday for a trio of crimson-colored portraits of British artist Lucian Freud painted by his longtime friend and peer Francis Bacon. The triptych sold to an unknown bidder for more than double its high estimate.

Francis Bacon's "Three studies for a portrait of Lucian Freud" Zuma Press

The sale signals an art-market comeback for Mr. Bacon, whose ubiquity and soaring prices at auction seemed laudable to collectors before the recession but struck others as worrisome ever since. Mr. Bacon is an Icarus no longer, and his strong performance could further fuel confidence in the rebounding global art market midway through London's major round of winter auctions.

"Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud" is actually three canvases standing a foot (30 centimeters) tall, depicting differing angles of Mr. Freud's face, each variation seeming squished or slashed by Mr. Bacon's signature brushwork. Mr. Bacon created the work in 1964, a decade after the pair and Ben Nicholson represented their country in the Venice Biennale, the art-world equivalent to the Olympics.

The late Geneva-based collector George Kostalitz bought the triptych the same year the artist created it; Mr. Kostalitz's heirs put the work up for sale with an estimate of £7 million to £9 million.

At the height of the boom-era three years ago, Mr. Bacon was a staple of major auctions in New York and London with works that regularly topped £10 million, thanks to demand from an influx of newly wealthy collectors from Russia and the Middle East. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich famously broke the artist's auction record when he paid Sotheby's in New York $86.2 million in May 2008 for a teal-colored Bacon triptych from 1976.

But when the recession hit and asking prices for artists everywhere began to plummet, Mr. Bacon all but disappeared from auction catalogs. His prolonged absence spooked some of his collectors—only three Bacons turned up at major auctions in 2009—and stoked Schadenfreude among dealers who questioned whether the auction houses had ratcheted his asking prices to an unsustainable level.

Three months ago, Sotheby's tested the waters by including his 1985 work, "Figure in Movement," in their major fall sale in New York. The decision was rewarded when "Figure" sold for $14 million, over its $10 million high estimate.

The triptych of Mr. Freud that just sold is one of several portraits Mr. Bacon made of his fellow painter during the 1950s and 1960s when the pair reigned over the London art scene with their often pained, emotionally charged portraits of friends and lovers.

Altogether, Sotheby's brought in £93.5 million from its "Looking Closely" sale of Mr. Kostalitz's art collection, including a record £13.4 million for Salvador Dalí's "Portrait of Paul Eluard " and £3.3 million for Mr. Freud's own three-inch-wide "Self Portrait." That work was expected to sell for only £800,000.

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