Tom's Message: First and Second Things (and "Unrealized" Potential)
Quick! Who (in your opinion!) was the greatest painter of the 19th century?
“What?!"
No, seriously. Think about it!
I bet you’re thinking of…Van Gogh, maybe?
Manet?
Monet? (I always get them confused!)
Winslow Homer was a good one!
How about the guy who did “An Arrangement In Grey and White No. 1”?
That’s the official name of the painting that James Whistler did of his mother.
(They decided to call it, “Whistler’s Mother”!)
One of my favs was George P. A. Healy.
He did lots of the official portraits of U.S. Presidents, from John Quincy Adams to Chester A Arthur!
Even tho’ I really like his paintings, I did spit on Millard Fillmore once!
Tina and I were at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington and I was looking soooo close at the 13th Prez, just amazed at how good it was!
“Babe! Look at this!”
And I discovered that the “th” in “this” was a little wetter than I realized and a tiny drop of MY spit flew through the air and landed on HIS nose.
“Yikes! What happens next?” I wondered.
(Thankfully, nothing!)
As you were thinking down the list of the greatest artists of the 1800’s…
Turner…Delacroix…Cezanne…Bierstadt…Seurat…
maybe John Singer Sargent (Remember “Uncle Sam Wants You!”?)…
I wonder if anyone thought of Lilias Trotter?
Probably not.
She wasn’t one of the greatest artist of the 19th century.
She just could have been.
In fact, the most authoritative art critic in the world John Ruskin, told her that she could be the “greatest living painter in the world” and that she “would do immortal things”.
She did do the second thing.
Just not the first thing.
Because she was determined to do the second thing.
So she couldn’t do the first thing.
She grew up in a prestigious manor home among the aristocratic of West London but as a young woman her love for Jesus drew her to care deeply for the poor and broken of East London. She began to volunteer with the YWCA, then a full-hearted urban mission to reach and bring lost and wondering souls to Jesus.
Her work at the YWCA House on Welbeck Street was an outreach to prostitutes who were always walking the streets of Victoria Station at night.
Her mother took her to Venice for the summer. When she learned that the honorable art critic, John Ruskin was also staying in the Grand Hotel, Lilias’ mother had the nerve to have some of her daughter’s water color paintings sent to his room for his expert opinion, with this note:
“Mrs. Alex Trotter has the pleasure of sending Professor Ruskin her daughter’s water-colours. Mrs. Trotter is quite prepared to hear that he does not approve of them – she has drawn from childhood and has had very little teaching. But if Mrs. Trotter could have Mr. Ruskin’s opinion it would be most valuable.”
A little grumpy at the intrusion, he took a disgruntled peek…and was shocked! And “dazzled”! And amazed! At her pure talent!
Ruskin and Lilias eventually spent long days together back in England. After he used the word “immortal” for her prospective future impact on the art world, she confessed, “I could only rush about in the woods all in a dream, and it was like a dream for the first day or two…so that I can hardly eat or sleep…”
There was a qualification however.
To become the greatest living painter…and immortal in the world of painting, she would have to “give herself up to art”.
Suddenly, she knew what the choices actually were before her.
And to painting, she said, “No.”
She couldn’t give herself up to art because she had already given herself up to Jesus.
And having given up all to Him, there was nothing left to give up.
“I see clear as daylight now, I cannot give myself to painting in the way he means and continue to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.’”
Her friends and family were shocked.
Jesus was not.
He knew her better than they did.
And she breathed what she would later call “the liberty of those who have nothing to lose because they have nothing to keep. We can do without anything while we have God.” She dove back into her work on Welbeck Street with her precious “lost sheep” as she called them…
Until one night…
in May, 1887 in a church meeting... she heard a missionary speak about the people of North Africa who knew nothing of Jesus. Not even His Name.
“Is there anyone in this room whom God is calling to North Africa?” he pleaded.
Lillias Trotter stood up. “It’s me. He is calling me.”
The next March, with two other women…
at the age of 35…
without a word of Arabic…
she arrived by ship and camel to the ancient city of Casbah, in Algiers.
Over the next 40 years…
she would travel on those same camels along the coast and into the Sahara desert... “bringing the light and love and life of Jesus to the Arab people of North Africa.
Her creativity (and use of her art!) proved to be 100 years ahead of others in strategic innovation. She learned how to share in a way that communicated dignity and respect, writing literature about Jesus utilizing the beautiful Arabic calligraphy and her own water color paintings as illustrations. She helped translate the Gospels of Luke and John “in a language that an Arab mother could read to her child”.
She wrote…
“We are working for the future and its coming day. We are dreamers. Dreaming greatly.”
John Ruskin hoped she would become “the greatest living painter in the world” and “do immortal things”.
She didn’t do the first.
She did do the second.
“Well done!”