HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF KENTUCKY, by Lewis Collins, Maysville, KY. and J.
A. & U. P. James, Cincinnati, 1847. Volume 1. Reprinted 1968. Jefferson
County. Artists of Kentucky, pages 622-623.
NEVIL CAIN, son of John S. CAIN, of Louisville, while still a
boy-painter, twice received such complimentary and substantial
encouragement from the legislature of Kentucky as has never been so soon
repeated to any of her most favored and distinguished artists. On March
9, 1871, before he was thirteen years of age, his portrait of Chief
Justice George Robertson was purchased by that body, at the handsome sum
of $500, and ordered to be suspended in the court room of the court of
appeals. Three years after, and before he was sixteen years old, the
senate, on Jan. 23, 1874, adopted a joint resolution to purchase, for
$250, his portrait of another venerable ex-judge of the court of
appeals, Joseph R. Underwood, then one of the oldest practicing lawyers
in the United States; it would probably pass the house in a few days.
Young CAIN, at the time of this last action, was in Europe (in Munich,
Bavaria), prosecuting his studies as a painter; he had already received
a bronze medal, for proficiency in painting - a rare compliment to an
American, and more remarkable than rare, considering the youth of the
recipient and severe competition. It would seem as if honors and
success almost beyond measure attend the path of this promising young
Louisville artist.