Sixteen-year-old Robert Cole Caples left New York City for the West in 1924, landing in the Great Basin desert of Nevada. When the boy got his first look at Pyramid Lake, his future as Nevada’s leading artist of the 20th Century was cinched. “Such unexpected beauty really hurt,” he said. “It was like being struck with the sky.” Like Agnes Pelton, Caples sought the essence of landscape, or what he called “the great dance going on behind the mask of things.” Completing his initiation as a desert painter, he eventually declared his devotion to one beloved place. Pyramid Lake became…
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