This paper will propose that Frances Hodgkins’s unconventionality in her own education and teaching practices limited her recognition and negatively affected her artistic legacy. The majority of her contemporaries participated in the rigid doctrines of academic institutional life and set themselves apart within their own networks. Because Hodgkins did not train within the English system, I will argue that she was considered as an outsider. Twentieth-century art academies did not exist within an isolated world. These authoritative institutions held a monopoly over the extensive fabric of modern art in England. Those who were disinterested in joining the academies were often refused themselves. Due to her limited finances, Hodgkins constantly struggled to keep her own artistic career afloat, so she found teaching necessary until she received some financial security past the age of sixty with her first gallery contract.