Born in Hungry, Diederich's father was a horse trainer and his mother a descendant from a famed artistic American family that included the renouned painter William Morris Hunt, and the architect, Richard Morris Hunt. After schooling in Switzerland, the Milton Academy in Boston, and a short stay out west, Diederich enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he met his life-long friend Paul Manship. After both Manship and Diederich travelled to Spain, Deiderch continued his travels for the next ten years throughout Europe and Africa. In the early teens, Diederich studied with the animal scupltor Emmanuel Fremiet in Paris.

Diederich became associated with the artist's colony in Woodstock during the 1920's and early 30's. In 1920 he held his first exhibition in the United States at the Kingore Gallery which consisted of works mainly of animals and sporting subjects. His works focused on sleek, graceful and dynamic animals that tended to be restrained in a circular format. This distinctive style is evident in the present bronze of Diana and her hound. The elongated, manneristic forms that bound gracefully forward are cleverly and subtely restrained by the backward glance and curvature of the bow. This compositional technique imposes an invisible barrier that realizes a circular form.

Diederich worked skillfully in three as well as two dimenions, producing art that was aesthetic and functional. Picador (lot 13), executed in 1925, expresses his unique and eloquent style in two dimenions. His silhouettes, cut from black paper, were either transposed to ceramics such as plates or enlarged and translated into metal and applied to functional items such as firescreens.