If the Salon art critic discusses the visibility of the "how it’s done" in the works exposed, the latter is the object of a process of invisibilisation in images of the studio, concrete operations being rubbed out in favour of idealising mises en scène of the work of creation. A contrario this dominant aesthetic paradigm, which leads to a rupture between the material practices in use in the studio and their iconographic or literary representations, this paper purports to read again "L’Atelier", a little-known short story by Louis-Edmond Duranty, as an original literary experiment exposing the underside of the making of works of art. In what seems to be an imaginary studio visit, the writer and art critic exposes the material scenario behind art, exhibiting its tools, describing the minutiae of the technical work of the hand, explaining to all different technical processes. Less a place to describe than a process to reconstitute, Duranty’s studio reveals to the reader one of the rare portraits of a working artist untouched by the clichés of virtuosity and creative ease.