Diana

Diana (Diane chasseresse, or Diana the Huntress) is a large oil on canvas painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1867 and signed 'A. RENOIR 1867' at lower right; it is in the Chester Dale Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The picture began as a studio study of a nude model. The model is usually identified as Lise Tréhot, Renoir's companion and frequent sitter in these years, although the art historian Michael F. Zimmermann and the Musée d'Orsay curator Sylvie Patry have both doubted the identification. According to Renoir himself, the study was considered rather improper, so he added a bow and a slain deer to turn the woman into the Roman goddess of the hunt, a subject more acceptable to the official Salon. He submitted it to the Salon of 1867, but the jury rejected it; the following year his Lise was accepted.

The goddess sits on a large mossy rock, one foot raised on a ledge, leaning on her bow, with an animal skin and a red sash over her lap. At her feet lies a deer with an arrow through its neck and blood running from its mouth. These realist details, together with paint laid on with a palette knife, show the influence of Gustave Courbet, while the bright greens and red accents point toward the Impressionism Renoir would adopt a few years later. The critic Peter H. Feist praised it as an accurate nude without the coarseness of Courbet's Bathers.

The canvas measures 199.5 × 129.5 cm. Its first recorded owner was Dr. George Viau, at whose sale in Paris on 21 March 1907 it was bought by Bernheim-Jeune. It later belonged to Alexandre Berthier, 4th Prince de Wagram, and passed through several dealers before Chester and Maud Dale bought it from Étienne Bignou in January 1933. Chester Dale bequeathed it to the National Gallery in 1963.