the popularity, frequent reproduction, and general availability of rossetti's later paintings of women have led to this association with "a morbid and languorous sensuality". his small-scale early works and drawings are less well known, but it is in these that his originality, technical inventiveness, and significance in the movement away from academic tradition can best be seen. as roger fry wrote in 1916, "rossetti more than any other artist since blake may be hailed as a forerunner of the new ideas" in english art.