Women play cards

Karen Agnete Þórarinsson was born in Copenhagen, and studied art in Denmark from 1926 to 1929, when she moved to Iceland. She lived at Ásbyrgi, north Iceland, until 1938, and then in Reykjavík. She was one of many Danish women who married Icelanders and moved to Iceland with them in the early part of the 20th century, having met her husband, Sveinn Þórarinsson, when both were studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Karen fell in love with Iceland and the Icelanders, and for the next six decades she painted and displayed her work around the country, becoming a well-known and respected artist. The principal genres in her work were portraits, nature impressions, floral works and still lifes. Not until the artist was 80 years old did she hold her first solo show, at Gallery Borg í Reykjavík, in 1984; she exhibited 13 oil paintings made 1980–84. But she left an extensive oeuvre at her death, after an artistic career spanning six decades.