Ironically we live in a time that, overall, is probably better for artists than the world any of those guys grew up in. People have always valued art but not the artists, and many artists through history, including the famous ones, died broke with their works only posthumously attaining value.

These days, through commissions, art is a much more viable profession than it ever was.

It was until ~2021 and it going rapidly downhill. I know some people that are really good at art and they got work on commission from publications, venues and so on. They have seen a significant drop in their bookings and the ones that they do get negotiate hardball because (1) everybody else is desperate too and (2) if they can't get to a deal then AI is now an alternative for the not-so-discerning public which was a fairly large chunk of the usecases.

So you were making book covers? Ah, so sorry. Nobody really cared that it was you.

And you can probably extend that to what's between the covers...

Is it though? It was for the last 20 years but I’d imagine sales of commissions are down immensely and going down every day