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I don't think great success as an artist is necessarily an inborn "genius" thing, personally.
Some artists did achieve great and new things with their work, of course. DaVinci and Monet come to mind as examples of trail blazers. However, many others developed a reputation as "great" or became famous mostly by prolific hard work, learning to produce high quality work in a high quantity (Bouguereau and Rubens come to my mind).
Many more achieved fame, and the attendant high prices, because of how they lived their lives (VanGogh, Pollock) more than for the quality of their work, in my opinion.
Fame and high prices are nowadays more often tied to marketing savvy than they are to great achievement in the quality of the work. (Look at the whole world of modern art and at the Thomas Kincade phenomenon.)
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