Power Points: God at Work Through Women Leaders Yesterday and Today

Lillias Trotter

BY LEECY BARNETT

“Have we learned the buttercup’s lesson yet? Are our hands off the very blossom of our life? Are all things-- even the treasures that He has sanctified--held loosely, ready to be parted with, without a struggle, when He asks for them?”1

Lillias Trotter was probably the best artist that no one has ever heard of. Born in 1853 London to a successful stockbroker and his respectable wife, Lillias grew up in the center of the political, economic, and cultural capital of the world, London. As a young child, she displayed an extraordinary ability to perceive beauty and flourished as a self-taught artist who took her sketchbook with her wherever she went. In her early 20’s, while on a trip to Venice, she met John Ruskin, who was the arbitrator of cultural taste in 19th century Britain. Ruskin’s opinion could make or break an artist’s reputation, so Lillias was thrilled when he saw her work and took her on as a protégé. In his famous lectures on The Art of England, Ruskin reflected on Lillias’ impact on his thinking: “For a time I used to say…women could not paint or draw. I am beginning, lately, to bow myself to the much more delightful conviction that nobody else can.”2

But there was another side to Lillias. After her father died when she was 12 years old, Lillias turned to her Heavenly Father and became a committed follower of Jesus Christ. In the 1870s, she became immersed in the spiritual awakening that was sweeping across England. Evangelist D.L. Moody was winning people to Christ, teacher Hannah Whitehall Smith was encouraging believers to live “a life of inward rest and outward victory,”3 and Mary Jane Kinnaird, founder of the YWCA, was mobilizing upper-class women to meet the needs of working-class women. Lillias was active in all three of these ministries and she felt God’s calling on her life.

By 1879, it seemed that Lillias would have to choose between art and faith. Ruskin said if she would devote herself to art “she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal.”4 She agonized for days over this choice which she knew would shape the rest of her life. But for Lillias there was ultimately no choice; she had to follow God: “I see as clear as daylight now, I cannot give myself to painting in the way he [Ruskin] means and continue still to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.’”5

Lillias continued with her YWCA ministry until 1887, when, at a missions conference, her life was once again set on a new trajectory. Lillias recalled the speaker asking, “Is there anyone in this room whom God is calling for North Africa? It’s me, I said, rising. He’s calling me.”6 Lillias spent the rest of her life as a missionary in Algeria, but she never gave up painting. She illustrated all her journals and the Arabic tracts she wrote with watercolors of the beauty she found in the people and landscapes of North Africa. Ironically, nearly a hundred years after her death, Lillias Trotter’s art is experiencing some notoriety due to the recent documentary, Many Beautiful Things.

Are you like Lillias, wise enough to view any talent you have as a “gift God freely gives us [which] is good and perfect, streaming down from the Father of lights, who shines from the heavens with no hidden shadow or darkness and is never subject to change.”? (James 1:17, TPT). And are you willing to let Him show you how and where to use that talent so He is the one glorified?

1 Trotter, I. L. (1890). Parables of the Cross. London: Marshall Brothers. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22189/22189-h/22189-h.htm (The Buttercup painting is alsofrom this book)

2 Ruskin, J. (1884). The art of England: Lectures given in Oxford. George Allen, p. 24.

3 Whitaker Smith, H. (1979). The Christian’s secret of a happy life. Revell, p. 13.

4 Rockness, M. H. (2015). A passion for the impossible: The life of Lillias Trotter.Discovery House, p.83.

5 Ibid., p. 84.

6 Hinson, L. W. (Director). (2015). Many beautiful things: The life and vision of LilliasTrotter [Film].