Why are modern artists able to draw hyper-realistic art using just a pen/pencil, but artists from 100+ years ago weren’t able to?

Question

Edit: In regards to what I mean by hyper-realistic, I’m referring to artwork seen here: Pics

these are almost photograph quality.

In: 0

Answer 1

The art 100+ years ago was probably just as good but there was no internet where it could be seen by millions of people. There could have been artists doing amazing work that was only seen by their family and friends and then lost when they died.