Education Quote by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

There’s a quiet sting in “I just had to plod along”: not the glamorous myth of the born genius, but the unromantic reality of skill acquired in private, by repetition, doubt, and necessity. Outhwaite’s phrasing is plainspoken, almost domesticated, and that’s part of its bite. “Plod” refuses the language of inspiration. It suggests endurance work, the kind that doesn’t photograph well or fit neatly into later legend-making.

The real pivot is “without having any teaching,” delivered with a soft shrug that lands as an indictment. In early 20th-century art worlds, “teaching” wasn’t simply instruction; it was access: to studios, networks, patrons, and the confidence that comes from being seen as worth investing in. For a woman artist, especially one working in illustration and the “minor” arts, institutional pathways were often narrowed by class, geography, and gendered expectations about what counted as serious training. The sentence compresses that whole structure into a single absence.

“Which was a pity” is the masterstroke: understatement as protest. She doesn’t dramatize the injustice; she lets it sit there as a small, reasonable regret, the way women were often expected to frame lost opportunities. The subtext is sharper: imagine what the work might have been with mentorship, critique, and formal support. Yet the line also claims authorship of her own development. If she “plodded,” she did it anyway, building a career in a cultural lane that was frequently dismissed even as audiences adored it.