43 ACNH Art Pieces: The 2026 Guide to Spotting Fakes

by Luciano Drehmer October 17, 2026

by Luciano Drehmer Published on October 17, 2026Updated on October 18, 2026

Every piece of Animal Crossing art that Redd sells in New Horizons copies a real work. There are 43 pieces in all, from Vermeer's The Milkmaid to the Rosetta Stone. That makes 30 paintings and 13 statues, and each half of the wild painting counts as its own painting. Sixteen of them are never fake. The other 27 can show up as a fake that changes one small thing. It might be a missing hat or an earring shaped like a star. The first chart lists all 30 paintings by their names in the game, from A to Z, so you can search this page for the one Redd is selling and go straight to the spot worth checking.

This guide matches each piece with the real work, the museum that keeps it and the detail the fake changes. Most of the paintings are among the most famous paintings in the world. The dates in our tables come from the museums that own the works. So they don't always match the sign next to each piece in your island's gallery. A section further down shows where the game and the museums don't agree.

How Redd's art shop works

Redd's boat came to the game on April 23, 2020, as part of a free update. When Nintendo shared news of the update, it said that Jolly Redd "will occasionally show up in his boat to sell in-game art." It also said that players "will have to figure out which art pieces are real and which are fake." You can give the real pieces to your island museum, and they open an art gallery there for paintings and statues.

A fan wiki called Nookipedia explains the rules of Redd's boat. It ties up at the secret beach behind your island, usually once or twice a week. You need a ladder to get down to it. Each visit has four artworks for sale at 4,980 Bells each, which is the game's money. That is two to four paintings and up to two statues. You can buy one artwork a day, even if you buy it on another island, and it arrives at your house the next day. Redd also sells two pieces of furniture in colors you can't get at Nook's Cranny, and those don't count toward your one a day.

When you try to give a piece to the museum, Blathers checks if it is real. He turns away the fakes, and Nook's Cranny won't buy them either. In this game, a fake also keeps its name after it is found out. Half the time, three of Redd's four pieces are fake and only one is real. Three visits in ten bring two fakes and two real pieces, and one visit in ten has just one fake. And one visit in ten has no real art at all.

So six visits out of ten bring more fakes than real pieces. There is some good news, though. Each real piece has a 20% chance of being one your museum still doesn't have. Redd also has a shop that is always open, and it is in the plaza on Harv's Island.

Animal Crossing paintings: the real twin of each one and the spot that gives a fake away

Name in the game	The real work	Where the original is	Check here	What the fake changes
Academic painting	Vitruvian Man Leonardo da Vinci, a drawing from his years in Milan	Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, kept off display to protect it	The top right corner, then the back	A coffee stain sits in the corner, and a key is taped to the back of the canvas.
Amazing painting	The Night Watch Rembrandt, 1642	Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam	The captain in black at the center	His wide black hat is gone.
Basic painting	The Blue Boy Thomas Gainsborough, 1770	The Huntington, San Marino, California	The boy's hair	He gets a bowl cut with long bangs, while the real boy's hair is shorter and wavy.
Calm painting	A Sunday on La Grande Jatte Georges Seurat, 1884–86, with a border added in 1888–89	Art Institute of Chicago	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Common painting	The Gleaners Jean-François Millet, 1857	Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Detailed painting	Hydrangeas with Fowl Itō Jakuchū, 1759	Museum of the Imperial Collections (Sannomaru Shōzōkan), Tokyo	The flowers and the left edge	The flowers turn purple, and the stamp and signature on the left are missing. The real one has blue flowers and both marks.
Dynamic painting	The Great Wave off Kanagawa Katsushika Hokusai, a woodblock print from about 1830–32	Prints in many museums, including the Met in New York	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Famous painting	Mona Lisa Leonardo da Vinci, 1503–1519	Louvre, Paris	Her eyebrows	They are raised instead of resting.
Flowery painting	Sunflowers Vincent van Gogh, 1888	National Gallery, London	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Glowing painting	The Fighting Temeraire J.M.W. Turner, 1839	National Gallery, London	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Graceful painting	Beauty Looking Back Hishikawa Moronobu, Edo period, 1600s	Tokyo National Museum	Her collar and the edges of the frame	She has no white collar and fills the whole frame. Now and then she even looks back the wrong way.
Jolly painting	Summer Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1563	Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna	The chest	The artichoke in the chest is missing.
Moody painting	The Sower Jean-François Millet, 1850	Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with a second version in Kōfu, Japan	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Moving painting	The Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli, about 1485	Uffizi, Florence	Behind the woman on the right	Open sky with floating flowers takes the place of the trees.
Mysterious painting	Isle of the Dead Arnold Böcklin, 1883, the third of five versions	Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Nice painting	The Fifer Édouard Manet, 1866	Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Perfect painting	Apples and Oranges Paul Cézanne, about 1899	Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Proper painting	A Bar at the Folies-Bergère Édouard Manet, 1882	The Courtauld, London	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Quaint painting	The Milkmaid Johannes Vermeer, about 1660	Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam	The milk	It gushes out wide and bright instead of falling in a thin stream.
Scary painting	Ōtani Oniji III as Yakko Edobei Tōshūsai Sharaku, a woodblock print from 1794	The Met in New York owns one print	His brows and his mouth	His brows slant up so he looks sad, and sometimes he smiles. The real actor scowls.
Scenic painting	The Hunters in the Snow Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565	Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna	The hunters at the bottom left	Only one hunter walks there instead of two.
Serene painting	Lady with an Ermine Leonardo da Vinci, about 1490	National Museum in Kraków (Czartoryski Museum)	The ermine's fur	It has a black-and-white pattern, but the real ermine is pure white.
Sinking painting	Ophelia John Everett Millais, 1851–2	Tate Britain, London	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Solemn painting	Las Meninas Diego Velázquez, 1656	Prado, Madrid	The man in the bright doorway at the back	He lifts his right arm as if he is waving. In the real one, his arm goes behind the curtain.
Twinkling painting	The Starry Night Vincent van Gogh, June 1889	MoMA, New York	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Warm painting	The Clothed Maja Francisco de Goya, 1800–1807	Prado, Madrid	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.
Wild painting, left half	Wind God and Thunder God screens Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Edo period, 1600s	Kennin-ji temple, Kyoto, kept at the Kyoto National Museum	Raijin, the thunder god	He is green, but the real one is white.
Wild painting, right half	Wind God and Thunder God screens Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Edo period, 1600s	Kennin-ji temple, Kyoto, kept at the Kyoto National Museum	Fūjin, the wind god	He is white, but the real one is green.
Wistful painting	Girl with a Pearl Earring Johannes Vermeer, about 1665	Mauritshuis, The Hague	Her earring and her eyes	The earring is shaped like a star, and her eyes open and close.
Worthy painting	Liberty Leading the People Eugène Delacroix, 1830	Louvre, Paris	Nothing	✅ Redd never sells a fake of this one.

The fake details follow Nookipedia's list of every fake in New Horizons. Each date and place comes from the page of the museum that owns the work, and those pages are listed under Sources.

Only 16 of the 30 paintings can turn up as fakes. Half of the 14 that are always real are French, so a French painting on Redd's boat is a safe buy.

⭐ Verdicts from Redd's boat

Light-hearted picks from the fakes and the real pieces above.

Our call	Piece	What decided it
☕ Messiest fake	Academic painting (Vitruvian Man)	Redd's copy has a coffee stain in one corner and a key taped to the back, so it is hard to miss once you know.
🎩 Fastest check	The Night Watch	The captain who loses his hat is the most important man in the picture, so a bare head stands out at once.
🌟 Flashiest swap	Girl with a Pearl Earring	Vermeer's pearl is little more than two brushstrokes, and the fake trades it for a star.
🛟 Safest shelf	The seven French paintings	None of them can ever be fake, so you can buy any of them without a second look.

Statues: the original, where it is and the fake's tell

Thirteen statues complete the set, from a very old clay figure from Japan to Rodin's Thinker. Only two of them, the familiar statue and the great statue, are never fake. Two of the fakes even come close to real history. The Louvre points to holes in the Venus de Milo where metal pieces were once attached. They held a crown and a bracelet on her right arm. So she did wear jewelry once, but not three necklaces. And on the Winged Victory, the right wing that the fake makes smaller was rebuilt in plaster.

In-game name	Real work and artist	Date and where it is	How to spot the fake
Ancient statue	Shakōki-dogū (goggle-eyed dogū), Jōmon period	Final Jōmon period, 1000–400 BC; Tokyo National Museum	Two antennae on the head; at night the eyes glow, and it floats when you interact with it.
Beautiful statue	Venus de Milo	about 150–125 BC; Louvre, Paris	Three necklaces; the real one wears none.
Familiar statue	The Thinker, Auguste Rodin	conceived 1880, enlarged 1904; Musée Rodin, Paris, one of many casts	Always genuine.
Gallant statue	David, Michelangelo	1501–1504; Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence	A book tucked between his arm and waist.
Great statue	King Kamehameha I, Thomas R. Gould	modeled 1879, unveiled 1883; in front of the Judiciary Building, Honolulu (the first cast stands in Kapaʻau)	Always genuine.
Informative statue	Rosetta Stone	196 BC; British Museum, London	Blue and glowing at night; the real one is dull gray.
Motherly statue	Capitoline Wolf	5th century BC, by the museum's dating; Capitoline Museums, Rome	The she-wolf's tongue hangs out.
Mystic statue	Bust of Nefertiti, workshop of Thutmose	about 1351–1334 BC; Neues Museum, Berlin	An earring on her right ear.
Robust statue	Discobolus (Discus Thrower), Roman copy after Myron	2nd century AD copies of a lost bronze of about 460–450 BC; British Museum, London, and Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome	A wristwatch on his right wrist.
Rock-head statue	Olmec colossal head	about 1200–900 BC; Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, Veracruz, among others	The lips curl into a slight smile.
Tremendous statue	Houmuwu Ding, Shang dynasty bronze	Late Shang dynasty, reign of King Wu Ding; national museum in Beijing	It has a lid; the real one is open at the top.
Valiant statue	Winged Victory (Nike) of Samothrace	about 200–175 BC; Louvre, Paris	Mirrored: left leg forward and a smaller right wing; the real one steps forward on the right leg.
Warrior statue	Terracotta Army warrior	Qin dynasty, before 210 BC; tomb complex of the First Qin Emperor, near Xi'an	The soldier holds a shovel.

Six famous originals, up close

Quaint painting: Vermeer's The Milkmaid

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, about 1660 — The thin stream of milk at the center is the detail the game's forger alters.
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The quaint painting copies Vermeer's The Milkmaid, which the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam dates to about 1660. The museum describes it in a way that sounds like a hint for the game: "Except for the stream of milk, everything else is still." That thin stream is exactly what Redd's fake changes, and it turns the milk into a wide, bright gush. In an older game, New Leaf, the fake milkmaid gave herself away in a different way, by losing her white hat.

The sign in the game says many people find the real painting "surprisingly small in real life," and that is true. It is only about 18 by 16 inches. The sign also says Vermeer painted it "at only 25 years of age." But Vermeer was born in Delft in 1632, so by the museum's date he was closer to 28. Only 36 paintings by him are known, and our guide to where each Vermeer painting hangs goes through them.

Wistful painting: Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, about 1665 — Vermeer built the pearl from a highlight and a reflection of the white collar.
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Girl with a Pearl Earring hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and the museum dates it to about 1665. It isn't a portrait of a real person. Instead it is a study of a made-up girl in a turban from a faraway land. Redd's fake goes after the jewel and turns it into a star.

The Mauritshuis says that in Vermeer's painting, the pearl is "little more than two brushstrokes." One is a bright spot at the top left, and the other is a soft glow below it from her white collar. Then it adds, "There is nothing more, not even a silver hook."

The sign in the game ends by asking if it is a real pearl at all. The museum thinks it probably isn't, because the pearl "is too large to be real." It may be a drop of glass made to look less shiny, or Vermeer may simply have made it up.

Famous painting: the Mona Lisa

The Louvre dates Leonardo's Mona Lisa from 1503 to 1519. Those dates explain the line on the game's sign that says Leonardo kept it for himself "until the very end." He went on working on it, still unfinished, until he died in 1519. The king of France, Francis I, very probably got it in 1518. In the game, the fake gives itself away in her face, where her eyebrows lift instead of resting.

Both pictures below keep the same pose and the same view, so you can compare them easily:

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c. 1503–1519, the original — Both keep the same crop and pose: her right hand resting on her left wrist, the winding path in the landscape at left and the arched bridge at right.

Our hand-painted oil reproduction of Mona Lisa — Both keep the same crop and pose: her right hand resting on her left wrist, the winding path in the landscape at left and the arched bridge at right.

Leonardo is the only artist with three works on Redd's boat, and all three can be fake. The academic painting is the Vitruvian Man, and the serene painting is Lady with an Ermine. The third is the famous painting. Our guide to Leonardo's short list of paintings covers the rest of his work.

Amazing painting: The Night Watch

Rembrandt's The Night Watch is from 1642. The man in black who loses his hat in the fake is the most important person in it. He is Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, and the Rijksmuseum says he "is telling his lieutenant to start the company marching." At first the painting had no title at all, and the name we use now goes back to a paper from 1797.

The canvas is still huge, even though four pieces were cut off in 1715. The biggest one came off the left side, and that was done so it would fit between two doors in Amsterdam's town hall. Our copy keeps the captain's wide black hat, which is the part the fake takes away:

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Night Watch, 1642, the original — The copy keeps the captain's broad black hat, the detail the game's forger removes, along with his red sash and the lieutenant beside him in pale yellow.

Our hand-painted oil reproduction of The Night Watch — The copy keeps the captain's broad black hat, the detail the game's forger removes, along with his red sash and the lieutenant beside him in pale yellow.

You can see the rest of his life's work in Rembrandt's most famous paintings.

Basic painting: The Blue Boy

Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy, 1770 — The boy's short, wavy hair is the part to compare with the game's forgery.
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The Huntington in San Marino, California, dates Gainsborough's The Blue Boy to 1770. That year it was shown at the Royal Academy in London. It paid tribute to the painter Van Dyck, so people began to compare the two artists. Redd's fake gives the boy a bowl cut with long bangs, but the real boy has shorter, wavy hair.

The real painting has some changes of its own hidden under the paint. The Huntington points to a man's head at the top center, left over from a portrait that was never finished. That shows Gainsborough used the canvas twice. There is also a dog at the bottom right, and he painted over it.

Solemn painting: Las Meninas

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656 — José Nieto stands in the lit doorway at the back, the figure the game's forgery changes.
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The Prado in Madrid dates Velázquez's Las Meninas to 1656. The person who tells you if it is real or fake is José Nieto. He was a palace official, and he stands in the bright doorway at the back. In the fake he raises his right arm as if he is waving. In the real painting, his arm goes behind the curtain. The sign in the game gets the rest right, because the faces in the mirror belong to King Philip IV and Queen Mariana. They are the parents of the little princess, Margarita, in the middle.

Spain has one more picture on the boat, Goya's The Clothed Maja, and it is never fake. The Prado says the first record of it is from 1808, when it was listed together with its partner, The Nude Maja. You can see more of his work in our guide to Goya's famous paintings.

Where the game's plaques and the museums disagree

The signs in your island gallery are mostly right. The National Gallery in London agrees with the game that Van Gogh painted seven Sunflowers. And the Berlin museum that owns Böcklin's Isle of the Dead from 1883 confirms that it is painted on wood. But the lines in the table below don't match what the owners of the works say.

Piece	The game's plaque	What the owner says
Academic painting (Vitruvian Man)	The drawing follows the ideal proportions "as stated in De architectura," the treatise by Vitruvius.	The Gallerie dell'Accademia thinks Leonardo probably did not know the treatise in depth: it was then available only in Latin, a language he did not understand.
Glowing painting (The Fighting Temeraire)	The ship was "commanded by Admiral Nelson."	The National Gallery, London: at Trafalgar in 1805 the Temeraire was "defending Nelson's flagship Victory". Nelson's own ship was the Victory.
Jolly painting (Summer)	Oil on canvas, circa 1563.	The 1563 Summer in Vienna is painted on limewood. The Louvre's version on canvas is dated 1573.
Calm painting (La Grande Jatte)	Circa 1885; the dot technique made it take two years.	The Art Institute of Chicago dates it 1884–86 and says Seurat came back to it two years after he started, adding figures such as the monkey on a leash.
Sinking painting (Ophelia)	1852.	Tate dates it 1851–2. Millais began the background in July 1851 at Ewell, Surrey.
Familiar statue (The Thinker)	1902.	The Musée Rodin: conceived in 1880, about 70 cm tall, to crown The Gates of Hell, where it stood for Dante under the title The Poet. The colossal version followed in 1904.
Mystic statue (Bust of Nefertiti)	Nobody knows whether the left eye fell out or was never finished.	The Berlin museums quote Borchardt's diary from the 1912 excavation: "Only much later did I realise that it had never existed."

Always genuine: the 16 you can buy without checking

These 16 pieces of Animal Crossing art never come as fakes, so you can buy them without looking closely. Among the paintings, the calm, common, dynamic, flowery and glowing ones are always real. So are the moody, mysterious, nice, perfect and proper ones. The sinking painting is always real, and so is the twinkling one, which is Van Gogh's The Starry Night. The warm painting is real too, and so is the worthy one, which is Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. Among the statues, the familiar one, which is The Thinker, and the great one, which is King Kamehameha I, are always real.

Seven of the 30 paintings are French. They are Seurat's Grande Jatte, Millet's two paintings of farm workers, Manet's two paintings, Cézanne's apples and oranges and Delacroix's Liberty. Not one of them can be fake, so French paintings are the safest buy on the boat. You can read the stories behind several of them in our guide to famous French paintings.

New York has its share, too. MoMA owns The Starry Night, and the Met has prints of both The Great Wave and Sharaku's actor. The paintings on the Met's walls are in our list of famous paintings at the Met. Two things also changed after the older game, New Leaf. The dynamic painting could be fake in that game, but now it is always real. And two statues that were always real in New Leaf can now be fake.

From Redd's boat to the museum wall

Every piece of Animal Crossing art on Redd's boat has a real twin. They go from the small Milkmaid in Amsterdam to the huge Las Meninas in Madrid. Outside the game, telling a real painting from a copy means looking at three things together. You check the painted surface and the back of the canvas, and then you follow its paper trail. Our guide on how to tell if a painting is real or fake explains how. Maybe you want one of these on your wall and not just on your island. The Milkmaid and The Starry Night are two of the paintings above that Art & See paints by hand in oil.

Sources

by Luciano Drehmer Published on October 17, 2026Updated on October 18, 2026

Paintings from this article

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Frequently asked questions

How do you tell if a painting is fake in Animal Crossing?

Inspect the artwork on Redd's boat before you buy and compare it with the original. Every forgery in New Horizons alters a single visible feature, such as a hat, an earring, a hunter or the color of a flower. If the piece is one of the 16 that never have a fake version, there is nothing to check. Experts use a slower version of the same habit on real canvases, set out in how to tell if a painting is real or fake.

How many artworks are in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

43. Nookipedia counts 30 paintings, both halves of the wild painting included, and 13 statues. A forged version exists for 27 of them; the remaining 16 are always real.

What is the quaint painting, and how do you spot the fake?

It is Johannes Vermeer's The Milkmaid, which hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and is dated about 1660. Watch the milk: a thin trickle means the piece is genuine, while a broad, bright pour means it is a forgery.

Can you sell or donate fake art in Animal Crossing?

Neither. Blathers turns forgeries away and Nook's Cranny will not buy them. A fake can still be placed like any other piece of furniture, and the forged ancient statue even floats when you interact with it.

Where can you see the real artworks from Animal Crossing?

In museums on three continents. Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum has The Milkmaid and The Night Watch; the Louvre has the Mona Lisa, Liberty Leading the People, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory; the Prado in Madrid has Las Meninas and The Clothed Maja; London's National Gallery has Sunflowers and The Fighting Temeraire; Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum has The Hunters in the Snow and Summer. In New York, MoMA owns The Starry Night, and in Tokyo the Tokyo National Museum keeps Beauty Looking Back and the goggle-eyed dogū.

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43 ACNH Art Pieces: The 2026 Guide to Spotting Fakes

How Redd's art shop works

Animal Crossing paintings: the real twin of each one and the spot that gives a fake away

Statues: the original, where it is and the fake's tell