“Do you make time for beauty?” asked my pastor in a sermon. It caused me to pause and ponder—when was the last time I made time for beauty? Different seasons of life get filled with many things, but not necessarily many beautiful things. There is an important difference. It’s interesting to note that science found that people who experience awe enjoy life more and become kinder people. So making time for beauty is not wasting time. Lilias Trotter was someone who knew this better than most.
This week at Haven Ministries we are featuring the life and work of Lilias Trotter, a missionary and artist who until recently was relatively unknown. Thanks to the dedication and research of biographer Miriam Huffman Rockness, Trotter’s impact for Christ and His kingdom are made manifest. We are delighted that Miriam joined us on our broadcast to share firsthand about the remarkable impact of Lilias Trotter’s legacy.
Who was Lilias Trotter?
Isabella Lilias Trotter (1853-1928) was born in the golden age of Queen Victoria to a wealthy family that lived in London’s West End. She had access to private education and travel. Trotter showed great artistic talent from an early age. She also displayed a spiritual receptivity that increased as she matured. Trotter’s life is characterized by both remarkable artistic talent and zealous service for God’s kingdom.
In her early twenties Lilias attended conferences—the Keswick Convention and D.L. Moody’s Preaching Mission—which solidified her understanding of Christian faith connected to outward practice.
Kevin Belmonte writes that Lilias Trotter sought to bring “divine compassion to others: the hope of salvation, yes, but hand in glove with this, an abiding commitment to the less fortunate in England.”
She began working with the YWCA and cared for prostitutes, which was sometimes dangerous work. She also helped to open an affordable public restaurant for working women.
Parallel to her passion for service was an exceptional sensitivity to beauty and a natural artistic aptitude. When she was 23, Trotter was introduced to John Ruskin (1819-1900), a hugely influential author, art historian, and art critic.
Ruskin noticed Trotter’s talent and took her under his wing, taking her on sketching expeditions and inviting her to paint Brantwood, his Lake District estate. This was a remarkable opportunity, especially for a woman. Ruskin recognized her rare and exceptional talent which he believed could be cultivated to make her one of England’s “greatest living artists.”
She seemed to learn instantly what she was taught, and more. Ruskin wrote to her, “I pause to think how–anyhow–I can convince you of the marvelous gift that is in you.” He was prepared to advance her career, and in 1879 he put before her the brilliant future that could be hers if she would devote herself to art.
Miriam Rockness writes, “Trotter wrote to a friend that Ruskin believed ‘she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be Immortal.’ As a talented teacher and powerful cultural leader, Ruskin could launch her career single-handedly. But the offer came with a caveat. She would have to ‘give herself up to her art.’ This challenge shook Trotter to the core.”
After agonizing over this decision in prayer, she came to a resolution. She wrote, “I see clear as daylight now, I cannot give myself to painting the way [Ruskin] means and continue to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.’”
She returned to London and invested her time and energy in her “vocation of caring.” She still maintained a friendship with Ruskin, and continued painting, “but now with a ‘great independence of soul’ that she would later describe as ‘the liberty of those who have nothing to lose because they have nothing to keep. We can do without anything while we have God.’”
A decade later, Lilias Trotter applied to the North African Mission to bring the gospel to Algeria, but was turned down for health reasons. So she did what any Victorian era, thirty-five-year-old single woman would do … she set off with two other women for Algiers, where she knew no one nor a single word of Arabic.
Throughout this time, Trotter wrote in her journal, “detailing her daily activities and her inner spiritual life in an unthinkably difficult ministry. From these records, illuminated by exquisite watercolors and strong sketches, a museum in miniature emerges of a country intimate and varied and a people ‘bright and living.’”
The team mastered Arabic, which was an imposing challenge. They connected with women in the Casbah (old city), gaining entrance through the children. They wrote Scripture cards, asking men in cafés to read them aloud for their understanding.
In 1893, they purchased an old, fortress-like house which became the base of their ministry for years to come. Miriam Rockness writes:
In 1906 they purchased a rambling old native house in Dar Naama–“House of Grace”—which became their official headquarters. In 1907 the work was organized under the name Algiers Mission Band (AMB). … Trotter seasonally alternated the winter work in the Southlands with springtime and autumn mountain and village visitation. She connected stations through an in-house magazine, El Couffa, and built bridges between these ministries and prayer supporters in Europe through intimate round-robin journals illustrated with tiny drawings and photographs. Later she printed illustrated reports supplemented by urgent updates–all designed to make the land and the people “vital and living” to those who would never have personal contact with their work. Trotter’s devotional leaflets and books were born out of the practical realities of her own tested faith. She also wrote in Arabic and English The Sevenfold Secret (1926), based on the seven “I AM’s” of Christ from the Gospel of John, for the Sufi mystics in the Southlands.
“Francis Bacon wrote that God has two textbooks—Scripture and Creation—and we would do well to listen to both. Trotter did.” Throughout her life, Lilias Trotter sought out quiet places to listen to God’s voice through His Word and prayer. She loved to meditate on God’s Word and used the daily devotional Daily Light. She read God’s “handiwork,” noticing the Creator’s design in nature. Her diaries are filled with paintings of the natural world.
Here is an example:
Lilias Trotter’s diary entry, July 9, 1907 recorded,
A bee comforted me very much this morning concerning the desultoriness that troubles me in our work. There seems so infinitely much to be done, that nothing gets done thoroughly. If work were more concentrated, as it must be in educational or medical missions, there would be less of this–but we seem only to touch souls and leave them. And that was what the bee was doing, figuratively speaking. He was hovering among some blackberry sprays, just touching the flowers here and there in a very tentative way, yet all unconsciously, life-life-life was left behind at every touch, as the miracle-working pollen grains were transferred to the place where they could set the unseen spring working. We have only to see to it that we are surcharged, like the bees, with potential life. It is God and His eternity that will do the work. Yet He needs His wandering desultory bees.
One of Lilias Trotter’s last projects was Between the Desert and the Sea, published in 1929. It depicted her beloved Algiers for English readers, complete with vivid watercolor paintings. She wrote in the preface, “The colour pages and the letterpress are with one and the same intent—to make you see. Many things begin with seeing in this world of ours.” Trotter depicted how “the heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1, ESV).
Lilias spent the last three years of her life confined to her bed at Dar Naama. She continued to oversee every aspect of the mission and followed the daily operations at all 15 stations. Of her death, Miriam Rockness wrote:
On Aug. 27, 1928, at age 75, she died, with members of her Arab and mission ‘family’ gathered around her bed. She was buried in Algiers, the place she called home, among those she considered family. How did Trotter manage to found and lead this mission work with both grave opposition and limited resources?
And how did she resolve the tension between the two paradoxical aspects of her nature: the strategic pioneering visionary and the mystical contemplative artist?
Miriam Rockness writes of Trotter’s impact:
We cannot document her influence in statistics or in visible institutions. However, when she died, the Algiers Mission Band was on solid footing; 30 members strong in 15 stations and outposts, united in her vision to bring “the light of the knowledge of God, in the face of Jesus Christ” to the people of that land, from the cloistered world of Arab womanhood to the male Sufi mystics in the desert. During her 40 years in North Africa, she pioneered means, methods, and materials, some considered to have been a hundred years ahead of her time. Her dream for a church visible was never realized in her lifetime, but her diaries record scores, possibly hundreds, of national believers, and today Christians still worship in Algeria. On the final image of Parables of the Cross–a sprig of new life growing from seemingly dead twigs of wood-sorrel–she penned the words from Revelation “Their works do follow them.” In writing of this truth, she prophetically supplied perspective on her own legacy and the legacy of all who invest in the kingdom of God: “…as these twigs and leaves of bygone years, whose individuality is forgotten, pass on vitality still to the new-born wood-sorrel. God only knows the endless possibilities that lie folded in each one of us.
As I consider the life of Lilias Trotter, I see in a new way what Jesus spoke of in the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:45-46). The merchant in the parable is in search of pearls, and when he finds one of great value he sells all that he has to purchase it.
Some would say that Lilias Trotter threw away the opportunity for prestige and patronage, comfort and acclaim in this life. Her artwork ended up in a back room of a museum, but Lilias found greater glory. Her impact on people’s lives in Algeria, and now in all who learn from her, is still felt today. Lilias Trotter made time for beauty, and her life is one of the most beautiful I have ever known.
About the Author
Kate Sunday has been a pastor’s wife and women’s Bible study leader in the western suburbs of Chicago for over thirty years. Her husband, David, is a teaching pastor at New Covenant Bible Church and President of WordPartners. She has three adult children and one sweet granddaughter. Kate is currently a student at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon, working on a Master of Arts in Ministry and Leadership.
Many Beautiful Things: The Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter
Discover the untold story of missionary Lilias Trotter, how she became a one of the world’s greatest women artists, and why her name was nearly lost to history.
Set against the backdrop of Victorian England, Many Beautiful Things introduces viewers to Lilias Trotter, a trailblazing artist and devoted follower of Christ who defied all expectations. In an era when women were often dismissed as incapable of creating high art, England’s foremost art critic, John Ruskin, declared that Lilias’s work could achieve immortality. Yet, as her artistic future hung in the balance, Lilias made a life-altering decision to follow the Lord’s calling on her life to become a missionary in North Africa.
Featuring the voices of Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey) and John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones), this film highlights Lilias’ faith and talent as she makes her remarkable journey to French Algeria in the late 1800s, where she encountered transcendent beauty and dedicated herself to pioneering missionary work among women and children.
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