Lilias Trotter

I. Lilias Trotter
Lilias Trotter, c. 1888
Born	14 July 1853 London, England
Died	28 August 1928 El Biar, Algiers, Algeria

Isabella Lilias Trotter (14 July 1853 – 28 August 1928) was an artist and a Protestant missionary to Algeria.

Lilias Trotter was born in Marylebone, London, to Isabella and Alexander Trotter, a wealthy for Coutts Bank. Both parents were well-read, intellectually curious, and inclined toward humanitarianism. Isabella Strange, a Low Church Anglican and the daughter of colonial administrator Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange, married Alexander after the death of his first wife, who had borne him six children. Lilias was the first of three children born to this second marriage.

Although Lilias was devastated by the death of her father when she was twelve, the family's financial circumstances were only comparatively diminished by his loss. The next year, the family moved to 40 Montagu Square, where a next-door neighbor was writer Anthony Trollope.

In her early twenties, Trotter and her mother were greatly influenced by the Higher Life Movement, and Lilias joined the volunteer force that counseled inquirers during the London campaign meetings of American evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

Although Trotter was a nearly self-taught artist, her mother believed her talent exceptional, and in 1876, she sent some of Lilias' drawings to art critic and social philosopher John Ruskin while all three were staying in Venice—the latter while recovering from the early death of Rose La Touche, a young pupil to whom he had proposed marriage. Ruskin praised Trotter's artistic skill, and she became an informal student and a good friend despite the disparity in their ages. Ruskin told Trotter that if she would devote herself to her art "she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be Immortal."

Although Trotter was drawn to the prospect of a life in art, in May 1879, she decided that she could not give herself "to painting and continue still to 'seek first the Kingdom God and His Righteousness.'" She and Ruskin remained friends, and he never entirely relinquished the hope that she might return to art. Trotter became active in the Welbeck Street YWCA and served as secretary, "a voluntary position usually filled by women like herself from wealthy families." She did a considerable amount of teaching and (unusually for respectable young women of the period) fearlessly canvassed the streets alone at night near Victoria Station for prostitutes who might be persuaded to train for an employable skill or to simply spend a night in a hostel. In 1884, suffering from physical and emotional exhaustion, she underwent surgery which, though "slight in nature...left her very ill." Apparently her heart was permanently damaged in the process.