LONDON—The 20/21 British Art Fair, the first of the autumn fairs, certainly showed the diversity and strength of British art of the 20th century—but art from the 21st was a little harder to find. While works from Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry were on view, there was little cutting-edge contemporary art.

But all the really big British Post-War names were there in strength. And even with the enormous recent rise in values in the Modern British market (which, according to fair organizers, has increased in the past five years by 17.7 percent per annum against 3.1 percent for Old Masters), there were some really good buys to be had and discoveries to be made.

One such discovery was a delightful Stanley Spencer at the Richard Green Gallery. The Mount, Cookham Dene is a wonderfully vivid picture (none of the usual Spencer domestic gloom) of a formal garden with allées and parterres under a cloudless sky. From a distance it looked like a David Inshaw; close up, it had all the serenity of those Constable depictions of his father’s garden.

This Spencer was delightful and intrinsically British—as were so many works at this fair. Even when the artist had been influenced by Continental movements, the delivery was subtly British.

Take the works of John Tunnard: False Dawn at the Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries had touches of Miró in its fragmented, skeletal outlines, but a certain rusticity in color and paint marked it as a British piece.

At Jonathan Clarke Fine Art, a magnificent Ceri Richard from 1936, The Sculptor, had a certain St. Ives quality that appealed to a buyer on the first night—who snapped it up for £150,000.

Julian Hartnoll is one of the doyens of the Post-War British scene, specializing in works by the Kitchen Sink Group, and he always has interesting pieces by one member of that movement, John Bratby. Two good examples on view were real value for money at £3,000-£5,000. I have always loved Bratby’s furioso attitude toward paint, composition and color; Super Six with Bonnet Belt (1960) gives a very good idea of what I mean.

Hartnoll was also showing a series of plaster casts by Eduardo Paolozzi, who died recently. These were miniature gems, ranging from casts of a classical foot next to a foot in a contemporary sandal to a maquette for a sculpture, now at the British Library, based on a Blake painting. Originating from the estate of Paolozzi’s secretary, to whom the sculptor had given them, these tiny casts were beautifully displayed as one installation—a marvellous way to acquire an entire collection in one go.

Peter Blake is still very much with us, and there were some terrific pieces to be seen, including Alma Cogan, an interesting example of high-60s pop-kitsch, on the Robert Sandelsen stand.

Howard Hodgkin was also very much in evidence on more than one stand. I have always liked the very early works by this artist, and an exquisite 1964 example, Girl Asleep, had none of the overworking to be found in later examples. This painting was to be seen at Caroline Wiseman Modern Art, which also showed a good Lucian Freud charcoal drawing of the head of a woman.

Now that I’ve let the name of Freud slip, I should mention that at the Browse & Darby stand, a trial proof of a Freud lithograph, Pluto, could be had for a hefty £48,000; I didn’t even like to ask the price of The Painter’s Doctor, a 2006 etching by Frued at Marlborough Fine Art.

That other titan of 20th-century British art, Francis Bacon, was represented at Peter Nahum at The Leicester Gallery: Not by a work by the artist, but, more unusually, in Piggy No. 13, a cloth portrait (commissioned by Bacon) by Claire Shenstone in which the artist’s face was molded out of cloth and then painted to create a vivid likeness.

Bringing back fond memories of an artist who recently died and who was a friend of mine for many years was Sandra Blow’s Untitled (c. 1972) at Wilson Stephens Fine Art. I remember Sandra working on this large piece in her studio on Fulham Road in the early 1970s, and it has not lost any of the freshness and superb spatial handling that I remembered.

Like so many British artists of her generation—particularly her fellow abstractionists—Sandra was overshadowed first by the New York School, then by Pop Art and ultimately by YBAs. We will have to leave it to time to bring us the essential rewrites that will ensure Sandra and her contemporaries their true place in the history of art. Meanwhile her work, and those of her contemporaries, still represents an interesting and accessible collecting area.