August Wilhelm Ferdinand Schirmer (born 6 May 1802 in Berlin; died 8 June 1866 in Nyon) was a German landscape artist.

As a youth Schirmer painted flowers in the royal porcelain factory; afterwards he became a pupil of Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow in the Berlin Academy, but his art owed most to Italy.

He became a disciple of his countryman Joseph Koch, who built historic landscape on the Poussins, and is said to have caught inspiration from J. M. W. Turner.

His sketches in Italy were more than transcripts of the spots; he studied nature with the purpose of composing historic and poetic landscapes.

[1] Schirmer's goal was to make his art the poetic interpretation of nature and he deemed technique secondary to conception.