Having worked tirelessly on the animated Loving Vincent movie, Sandra Hickey had to paint her way out of replicating Van Gogh’s style, she tells Ellie O’Byrne.

From the Eiffel Tower at 130, to 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Suzanne Harrington rounds up the milestones worth travelling for.

Business books of the year

Des O’Sullivan looks forward to some of the exhibitions that are due to open in the coming weeks.

Our regular contributors select their highlights of the year.

One question I am often asked is what is Ireland’s best selling wine and the answer — Santa Rita 120 — probably shouldn’t surprise you, writes Leslie Williams.

WHEN you speak to Irish artist Colin Davidson, his thoughtfulness is evident. Nothing is throwaway or said for the sake of filling space. Davidson is a thinker, a philosopher of sorts. 

Jean-Baptiste Seckler is from France, a country that until September had never hosted a commissioned mixed martial arts event. The Ultimate Fighting Championship has yet to brought bring its all-swinging, all-dancing, seemingly all-conquering circus to French shores.

Fiann Ó Nualláin explores the ethnobotany of seduction and the use of aromatherapy to set mood while looking at food to enhance romance for the gardener and his or her beloved, this Valentine’s weekend.

A painting Vincent van Gogh created while briefly working side-by-side with his friend Paul Gauguin in the south of France has brought in $66.3m (€59m) at auction.

The Sunrise Ruby, a “pigeon’s blood” hued stone in a ring mounted by Cartier at Sotheby’s, Geneva on May 12 ($12-18 million)

Hollywood stylists have said they are not surprised at the theft of a $150,000 (€134,000) pearl-covered gown worn by Lupita Nyong’o at the Oscars.

4/5

John Behan: Man with Fish (Me and the Mudder-in Law)

I left Dublin too late last Thursday and had to hare it down the motorway to get to CIT in time, writes Dónal Óg Cusack.

IF you ever want to test parental, familial and romantic bonds to see how cool-headed you really are, how much you actually love your children, and how strong your relationship is, pile them all into the car.

“It is difficult to know yourself,” Van Gogh once wrote, about self-portraits, “but it isn’t easy to paint yourself either.”

It is not every fair that boasts a Van Gogh for sale but The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) now underway in Maastricht, The Netherlands, bills itself as the world’s leading art fair.

Hans Asperger, the erstwhile prominent Viennese paediatrician, could never have envisaged the global phenomenological fervour which enveloped and exponentially developed his collated observations on the perceived ‘psychopathy’ exhibited by some children with apparent communication, social-skillset, peer-empathy and physical adroitness issues.

A "fake" Vincent Van Gogh painting found dumped in an attic has been revealed as a genuine artwork worth up to £30m.

A long-lost Vincent Van Gogh painting, the first full-size canvas by the Dutch master discovered since 1928, has been identified by the Dutch Van Gogh Museum .

Give Me Your Hand is a play with a simple premise that has been hugely successful both in Ireland and internationally.

THE 2013 January exhibition of watercolours by JMW Turner at the National Gallery of Ireland includes the entire Vaughan bequest and five other watercolours acquired in recent years.

Chanel’s model portrays the vampy look that is very popular at the moment, and is being pushed by many of the big brands.

The man who made the anti-Muslim film that enraged parts of the Islamic world has gone into hiding.

SATURDAY

Higher Gossip

Quiet

Joya Kuin

Serbian police have uncovered a painting believed to be by French impressionist Paul Cezanne, which was stolen from a private Swiss museum in 2008 in one of the biggest art thefts in Europe at the time.

A Galway drawing by Augustus John is among the 38 artworks works belonging to Elizabeth Taylor to be sold at Christie’s in London next month.

VISITORS to Cork city’s Bishop Lucey Park are in for a memorable festive treat over the coming weeks.

WE were sitting in a café on the Ormeau Road, talking football, when Declan Bogue told me that he was writing a book.

Costing north of €500, daytrips to Lapland aren’t exactly a holiday for the masses. Not to worry, writes Pól Ó Conghaile, there are lots of winter wonderlands right here at home

EXPERTS at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum remain unconvinced by a new book that claims the 19th century Dutch artist was accidentally shot by two teenagers and did not die from self-inflicted wounds.

Seán Scully insists his marriage and fatherhood have lifted the gloom in his monumental paintings, reports Marc O’Sullivan

TORTURED artist Vincent Van Gogh died this month back in 1890.