LONDON.- A triptych of British painter Lucian Freud by his friend Francis Bacon fetched 23 million pounds ($37 million) on Thursday at a Sotheby’s auction in London, more than double its high estimate. Combined with a new auction record for any surrealist work of art — Salvador Dali’s “Portrait de Paul Eluard” sold for 13.5 million pounds — the sale of works from a private collection titled “Looking Closely” raised 93.5 million pounds. That far exceeded expectations of between 39.3 and 55 million pounds and will undermine confidence among major auction houses that the booming art market can sustain its 2010 bull run after contracting sharply late in late 2008 and throughout 2009. Dali’s painting had been valued at 3.5 million to 5 million pounds before the auction, but the eventual price tripled the artist’s auction record set earlier in the week. Yet the real star of the show was Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Portrait of Lu