Not sure. They were enjoying copyright, but they didn't make money out of their art because they didn't cater to the market, mostly, that's why they were destitute. Van Gogh didn't sell more than a single painting, but it was because his genius wasn't recognized until later, not because of the framework surrounding art, which was basically the same then as now. He yet produced 2,100 artworks between 1880 and 1890 -- it's hard to image he would have been able to do more even if they had been throngs of buyers standing in line to buy the paintings to incentivize him.
That's a possibility, which needs to be demonstrating, by studying the rate at which artworks are made and the rate at which masterpieces are produced, from a situation where people cannot live from selling their works to a situation where they can. It is debated: Rufus Pollock's [not related to Jackson]) demonstrates that limited incentivization can increase production while extended terms can limit the rate of cultural accumulation. Demonstration of an increase of market-driven production, yet no increase in widely acclaimed pieces, is also a credible outcome which is currently being studied. The effect isn't as clear cut as the "gut feeling" is. Or, maybe it just confims another gut feeling one can have: you get more unremarkable hollywood blockbusters, but the amount of Godards, Kurosawas and Fellinis remains constant.
Sure, but wouldn't you want to be healed by a doctor that also spends time teaching medicine at John Hopkins or Mayo Clinic?
There are many other ways of getting a living that doesn't prevent one to concentrate on their art, contrary to delivering pizzas.
The most common example would be retired people -- we spend an average of 20 years living without having to do anything at all for a living, and with better living conditions than working people on average, so it's far from starving, though the declining health could be detrimental -- but also one can get one of the many creative jobs. For example, the art and music teachers. Thought they must take time giving lessons and grading the pupil's "artworks", it's not detrimental to their practicing their job and, despite their workweek not limited to the few hours in front of the students as many think, they have enough free time to be productive artists. That's not a lot of job opportunities (roughly 52,000 persons vs 27 millions employees in France) but this number can be compared to the number of professional artists. Not enough to employ, full time, every single guy making money (even a single euro) from IP (350,000)* but it is significant compared to the number of people actually being professional artists (roughly 20,000 gets enough revenue to sustain themselves, with an equivalent amount having no other professional income source but complementing them with general wellfare allowances).
* this number includes not only artists but also scholars making money from scientific articles or engineers from patents. It's larger than the number of artists.
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