Living with the work
Your parents are visiting: leave it up
7 min read ▪ 30 August 2026
Home › Notes from the studio › Living with the work › Your parents are visiting
Taking it down for the weekend is the option most people consider and the only one with a lasting cost. Willem van der Krieken on what the empty hook says.
Should you take a nude painting down when family visits?
No. Taking it down and putting it back is the most expensive option available, because the cost is not the twenty minutes — it is that you have confirmed to yourself that you own something to hide. The hook and the unfaded rectangle tell the story anyway. If you need a neutral room, choose it when you buy, not with a screwdriver afterwards.
- Almost nothing happens. That is the finding, and it disappoints everybody.
- A wall with a painting removed from it is more conspicuous than the painting was.
- There is one case where taking it down is the right call, and it is not embarrassment.
The option everybody considers
Christmas, a christening, your mother staying for four days. The thought arrives on its own about a week before, and it is always the same thought: take it down, put it in the spare room, put it back on Monday.
It is a reasonable-sounding plan. It costs twenty minutes at each end, it is completely reversible, and it removes a risk. That is exactly why it is the option people choose, and it is worth knowing what it charges you for the service.
What it actually costs
Not the twenty minutes. What it costs is that you have made a decision about the painting, and you now know what it was.
Up to that point, the canvas on your wall was something you bought because you could not stop looking at it. The moment you take it down for a visit, it becomes a thing that has to be hidden from certain people, and you are the person who established that. It does not go back to being the first thing when you rehang it on Monday. There is now a category in your house of people it comes down for, and every subsequent visit gets sorted into it.
Buying it is the easy part. This is the part where the actual decision gets made, and it gets made whichever way you go — leaving it up is also a decision, and it is the cheaper one.
| What you do | What it costs on the day | What it costs afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Leave it up | Possibly one comment in the first hour | Nothing. The question is settled once and does not come back |
| Take it down for the weekend | Forty minutes, plus a hook and an unfaded rectangle | A permanent category of people it comes down for, and every future visit sorted into it |
| Hang something else in its place | An hour, and usually a mirror that does not fit | The same, plus a wall you now do not like |
| Choose the room when you buy | Nothing. It was decided before delivery | Nothing. This is the option that survives every visit |
The empty hook tells the story
The practical half, which people discover on the Saturday afternoon.
A wall that has had a painting on it for two years is not a blank wall. There is a hook, or two. There is a rectangle of paint that has not faded at the same rate as the wall around it, and on a wall that gets any daylight the difference is visible from across the room. There may be a nail hole filled in a hurry with the wrong white.
So the wall now says: something was here, it was about that size, and it was taken down before you arrived. A guest who would have registered a painting and moved on instead gets a small mystery with an obvious solution. If the aim was for nobody to think about it, the empty wall is a worse outcome than the painting was.
Filling the space with something else has the same problem in a smaller way, because the something else is almost always a mirror that does not fit or a print you do not like, hung on a hook at the wrong height. The wall knows.
What happens if you leave it up
Almost nothing, and that is the honest finding rather than a reassurance.
The most common outcome is that nobody mentions it. The second most common is a single comment in the first hour, usually about the painting rather than about you — who made it, where you found it, how long it took. Three sentences cover that entirely, and they are in what to say when a guest asks.
Two things make the difference between those outcomes, and neither of them is the subject of the painting. The first is how it is hung: a canvas in the middle of a wall in good light reads as a choice, and a canvas half behind a door reads as something you hoped nobody would notice. The second is your face when they look at it. Parents in particular are reading you, not the wall, and they have thirty years of practice.
Children, if they are in the party, are the least of it — children and a painting of a woman covers what actually happens there, which is also almost nothing.
If you genuinely want a neutral room
Some people do, and it is not cowardice. It is a legitimate preference, and there is a right moment to act on it: at the point of buying, when you decide which wall the painting is going on.
A house with a study, a landing or a bedroom carrying the direct work and a neutral downstairs is not a compromise; it is a plan. It survives every visit, needs no screwdriver, and nobody ever notices it was a plan. That is the same argument as the route in clients and colleagues in your house, applied to family, and it is the reason which room is worth thinking about before the delivery rather than after.
The version to avoid is buying for the living room while planning to take it down four times a year. That is the arrangement that costs the most and satisfies nobody, including you.
The one case where taking it down is right
There is one, and it has nothing to do with embarrassment.
If a specific person staying in your house has a specific reason — a history that makes a painting of a body genuinely difficult rather than merely awkward, or a bereavement, or an illness — then take it down, and do not think about it twice. That is not hiding the painting. That is a decision about a person, made for that person, and it is a completely different act from taking it down in case somebody disapproves.
The test is simple. Are you moving it because of somebody's situation, or because of somebody's opinion? The first is hospitality. The second is the thing this article is about.
And if the answer turns out to be that the painting has never quite fitted the room it is in, that is worth knowing too. The collection ranges from very direct to almost entirely oblique — Lindsey (The Mirror) at 100 × 80 cm sits at the quieter end.
Questions people ask
Should I take my nude painting down when my parents visit?
No. The twenty minutes is not the cost. The cost is that you have decided the painting is something to hide, and that decision does not reverse when you rehang it. A hook and an unfaded rectangle also tell the story more loudly than the painting did.
What if they say something?
Most people say nothing. If somebody does, it is usually about the painting rather than about you: who made it, how long it took, where you found it. Three sentences cover it, and then you move the conversation on yourself.
Is it obvious when a painting has been taken down?
Usually, yes. Walls fade around a hung canvas, so there is a rectangle in a slightly different shade, plus a hook or a filled hole. On any wall that gets daylight it is visible from across the room, which makes the empty wall more conspicuous than the painting was.
When is it right to take it down?
When a particular person staying with you has a particular reason: a bereavement, an illness, a history that makes it genuinely difficult. That is a decision about a person and it is simply hospitality. Taking it down in case somebody disapproves is a different act.
