Diana Hill (Diana Dietz) was born in c.1760 the daughter of a London jeweller. She trained as a miniaturist under Jeremiah Meyer-court miniaturist to George Iii and Queen Charlotte. She first exhibited her miniatures at the Society of Artists in 1775 and was awarded a prize by the Society of Arts for her skilful flower paintings in the same year. She also exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1777 and 1780. After her marriage in 1781 to Haydock Hill, she exhibited as an honorary exhibitor at the Ra in 1785 as “Mrs Hill”. Her husband died later that year and it was as a result of this that she chose to leave the country and seek to continue her career in India, arriving there in 1786. Diana remarried in India but her second husband died in 1817. She eventually returned to England and died in Twickenham in 1844, having not painted professionally for some time before that. The miniaturist Ozias Humphrey, also based in India at the time, noted her arrival in 1786 as it meant that he would face increased competition-apparently acknowledging the high standard of her work. One of her most famous portraits was of General Cornwallis and this piece is in the Mount Vernon Collection in the USA.