G: Your friend is misremembering or conflating plot elements.

In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the father burning the painting is the impending threat throughout most of the story—the idea that the father’s destructive act (burning the painting) would seal the fate of the world by erasing it from existence. The entire game is structured around preventing that from happening.

When you reach the end, depending on your choices, the outcomes may vary, but in none of the canonical endings does the father actually succeed in burning the painting.
You either:

• Stop him, preserving the world in some form, or
• The painting is altered or reclaimed in a way that averts the original destruction.

There is no ending where the father successfully burns the painting.
It’s possible your friend:

• Misinterpreted the metaphorical destruction of something else as the painting burning.
• Remembered an early cutscene or flashback showing a near-burning, but not the ending.
• Collapsed the stakes and the outcome in their memory, assuming that because the threat was so present, it must have happened.

TL;DR:

Your friend is wrong. The father burning the painting is the primary threat you actively prevent. There is no ending where it actually happens. They are probably misremembering or misinterpreting an earlier event.

G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]

G: [Non-text content: reasoning_recap; content_type=reasoning_recap]

G: I dug into the story references to make sure—your friend is misremembering. In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the father (Renoir) is indeed driven to destroy the Canvas (the world inside the painting), but never succeeds—he's trying to prevent Aline's chaos and end the cycle, yet the threat is something you actively work to stop citeturn0search24turn0news20.

Here’s a clearer breakdown:

• Renoir’s goal: He doesn't want to burn a physical painting; he wants to erase the Canvas by removing Aline’s painted copies, ending the Gommage and bringing his family back home citeturn0search24.
• Final confrontation: You choose to side with either Maelle (who wants to rebuild the Canvas) or Verso (who wants to destroy it)—but regardless of choice, there’s no ending where Renoir simply burns the painting. Instead:
  • Maelle rebuilds it (and fades over time).
  • Verso destroys it entirely, ending the Canvas citeturn0news20turn0search24.
• No canonical climax has the father literally burning a painting—your role is exactly to stop that sort of destruction.

So yes, I looked it up: none of the endings feature the father literally burning the painting. It’s a metaphorical threat, not the actual end scene.