The Norwegian artist Reiner Gotaas made hundreds of small pencil drawings during his time in the United States. The early pencil and paper illustrations mounted in this worn leather album, which are primarily dated 1911, show railroad tracks, Minnehaha Falls, Golden Gate before the bridge, and more of the American West at the turn of the century. In addition to a plethora of drawings of San Francisco, there are also a great deal of Clifton, Arizona. In drawing after drawing, nearly all meticulously signed and dated, Gotaas captures the landscape in a variety of styles, from clean line drawings to moody, heavily-shaded scenes that look more like charcoal than pencil.

Several pages are dedicated to large illustrations of Reidar and his family, with humorous captions. One shows four men sharing a bed, with one of them sat upright and shouting at the others, “If you are not still now, I will throw you out!” In addition to his original drawings, there are studies of works by other artists, including sculptures by Theodor Lundberg, drawings of San Francisco by Joseph Pennell, paintings by Anders Zorn, and a handful of illustrations from publications of Grimm märchen.

Not content to limit himself to the visual arts, the album includes two poems Gotaas wrote in Norwegian. The first, about the prairies of Minnesota, is accompanied by an illustration looking out through a train car window. Gotaas also wrote out Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” in English, to a loose leaf of paper.

The last several pages feature miniature photographic reproductions of paintings and drawings by Gotaas, a few of which appear in the original in the album. Many of these works are dated to the early 1920s, with the last three pieces dated to 1927 and 1931. Together with an oil painting looking out over the Pacific Ocean near San Francisco, dated to September 10, 1917.