Tom Reece, Billiard Champion (Signed) (Original)
Medium: Pen & Ink on Board
Size: 12" x 11" (300mm x 280mm)
Date: 1970
Signature: Signed by artist lower right
Code: ColvinReece
This is the Signed unique original Pen & Ink drawing by Neville Colvin.
An original pen and ink drawing published in a British magazine for a series of articles "Sensations of Sport".
Tom Reece (12 August 1873 – 16 October 1953) was an English professional player of English billiards. He was six times runner-up in the professional billiards championship, now regarded as the world championship, losing three times to Melbourne Inman in finals from 1912 to 1914, and three times to Tom Newman in the 1921, 1924 and 1925 finals.
He made the unofficial world's highest billiards break of 499,135 in 1907 using a cradle cannon technique shortly before it was banned from the sport. In 1927, his prowess with the pendulum stroke led to that also being banned from use in competition.
His highest officially-recognised break was 901, which he compiled in 1916. He authored two books, Dainty Billiards: How to play the close cannon game (1925), and his autobiography Cannons and Big Guns (1928). Reece died on 16 October 1953, a week after suffering a stroke.
- Artist BiographyNeville Maurice Colvin (17 December 1918 - 1991; New Zealand & UK)
Neville Colvin was born in New Zealand and began his career as a cartoonist in 1936 working for the Wellington Evening Post doing political and sports cartoons for a decade.
In 1946, facing political censorship, he left New Zealand and moved his family to London where he continued his cartooning career, primarily drawing sports and political cartoons for the News Chronicle, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and Evening Standard until the mid-1950s.
He then decided to expand his scope to serialized newspaper strips drawing Ginger & Co. for Swift Weekly from 1960-62.
Colvin briefly drew the James Bond strip 1976-77, providing an ending to the story 'Ape of Diamonds' for syndication whilst author Jim Lawrence and artist Yaroslav Horak concentrated on a new series for the Sunday Express. Colvin drew episodes 3384-3437 for the Daily Express, the strip ending on 22 January 1977.
Between 1977 and 1980, Colvin worked on a number of projects, including a Sunday strip featuring Modesty Blaise written by Peter O'Donnell, but the idea was dropped after Colvin had drawn seven episodes. Colvin subsequently replaced Romero on the daily strip on 27 May 1980 with the story 'Dossier on Pluto'.
He went on to draw 1,902 episodes - only slightly fewer than Jim Holdaway, the first artist on the Modesty Blaise strip- and his last strip appearing on 15 September 1986. One story, 'The Scarlet Maiden' (published in 1982), was the completion of the Sunday strip tryout from some years earlier.
Neville Colvin died in Camden, London, in 1991.
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