They Made Headlines: Battle of the River Plate (Original)
They Made Headlines: Battle of the River Plate (Original)
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 15" x 20" (385mm x 515mm)
Date: c. 1970
Code: CotonGrafSpeeLL
This is the unique original Gouache painting by Graham Coton.
The Battle of the River Plate was the first naval battle in the Second World War and the first one of the Battle of the Atlantic in South American waters.
The German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee had been located in the South Atlantic a long time before the war began, and had been commerce raiding after the war began in September 1939.
One of the hunting groups sent by the British Admiralty to search for Graf Spee, comprising three Royal Navy cruisers, HMS Exeter, Ajax and Achilles (the last from the New Zealand Division), found and engaged their quarry off the estuary of the River Plate close to the coast of Argentina and Uruguay in South America.
In the ensuing battle, Exeter was severely damaged and forced to retire; Ajax and Achilles suffered moderate damage. The damage to Graf Spee, although not extensive, was critical; her fuel system was crippled. Ajax and Achilles shadowed the German ship until she entered the port of Montevideo, the capital city of neutral Uruguay, to effect urgent repairs.
After Graf Spee's captain Hans Langsdorff was told that his stay could not be extended beyond 72 hours, he scuttled his damaged ship rather than face the overwhelmingly superior force that the British had led him to believe was awaiting his departure.
- Artist BiographyGraham Coton (1 December 1926 - 14 October 2003; Woolwich, London, UK)
Graham Coton's artistic metier was the Second World War. Born in Woolwich, London, he was largely self-taught and attended the Goldsmith's College of Art in London, which he says was a "disaster", and his education was interrupted during World War II. He served in the R.A.F. from 1944 and in 1946/1947 he was working there as a Physical Instructor.
He began freelancing for Amalgamated Press in the early 1950s. Although he started as a strip artist by drawing Kit Carson for Cowboy Comics Library and later drew four short strips for the Thriller Comics Library (an adventure of Gulliver for no. 5, a Dick Turpin strip for no. 8 and two Three Musketeer strips in issues 12 and 26), it was not until he started drawing Captain Phantom, the World War II Master Spy, for Knockout in 1953, that he really came into his own. Some of these strips were later reprinted in Thriller Comics Library with the lead character renamed Spy 13.
Coton was very much a new force in comics when he first appeared, bringing with him a violent, ultra-tough approach. Coton also created the strip Space Family Rollinson in the early 1950s which was reprinted in France, Germany, Italy and Portugal.
Coton's two short Musketeer strips are interesting mainly for their story lines- particularly the reunion with Aramis in Musketeers Ride Again (no. 26) - for the artwork is not really in tune with the swashbuckling genre.
Coton will be mainly remembered as far as comic art is concerned for his car racing strips in Tiger, his superb war strips in Top Spot and, most of all, for his dynamic covers for the War and Battle Picture Libraries.
Besides his work for the comics, Coton did artwork for numerous magazines, books, Royal Doulton commemorative plates, Readers Digest and book jackets, among other things. He also did commissions that were numerous and varied, from portraits, to animals, pets, landscapes, seascapes, trains, planes and automobiles. He died on 14th October 2003 at his home in East Sussex.
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