Many stories have been mistakenly attributed to De Maupassant over the years.  A famous edition of his complete stories was published in 1903 which contained 65 stories which he did not write !   This was corrected in the 1955 Doubleday edition edited by Artine Artinian which is still considered the authoritative edition and can still be found on Amazon or abebooks at not too steep a price .  " The Artist " is not included in that volume so it was probably not written by De Maupassant .

You still read " The Artist " on line , however , as it is still attributed to him on some on-line sites .  