A gentleman, by Diana Dietz Hill,
signed, circa 1790.

Diana Dietz Hill spent the majority of her short professional career in India.  Her delightful works are exceedingly rare.

Set in the original gold locket frame adorned on the obverse with blue, gold and white enamel, the reverse with Bristol glass surrounding an aperture containing plaited hair.  The miniature is signed lower right H.

2 1/16 inches high (5.3 cm)

Diana Dietz Hill (c.1760-1844) arrived in India in 1786.  She was described by the ceaselessly grumpy and jealous Ozias Humphry as a "pretty widow with two children."  He went on to refer to her arrival as "a most unlucky importation...who had adventured across the immense ocean in search of a provision." He did though begrudgingly acknowledge that as a miniaturist she had "great merit." Humphry (who the year before had grumbled about John Smart's arrival in India) was right to worry.  Diana Hill's brother-in-law, stationed in Calcutta, where she and her children settled, knew all the "leading people."  Hill quickly became one of the most prominent miniaturists in India.  She began her career in London as a student of Jeremiah Meyer, first exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1775 as Diana Dietz.  In 1781 she married Haydock Hill at St. Mary's Marylebone and quickly had two children.  By 1785, when she exhibited at the Royal Academy, Hill was a widow.  The next year she left for India.  Humphry returned to England in 1787, receiving a letter in 1788 informing him that "Mrs Hill is still making handsome faces in the house you lived in last in Calcutta."  In November of that year, Hill marred Lieutenant Thomas Harriott of the First Native Infantry (his miniature portrait by Hill is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum).   At that point, only two years after arriving in India, she ceased to paint professionally.   The family returned to England in 1806. 

See:            Walpole Society, vol. XIX for more information on this artist's fascinating time in India.