Gerhardt Wilhelm von Reutern

Gerhardt Wilhelm von Reutern (17 July 1794, Walk – 22 March 1865, Frankfurt) was a Baltic-German military officer and painter who co-founded the Artists' Colony at Willingshausen.

He participated in several campaigns during the Napoleonic Wars as a cavalry lieutenant and lost his right arm at the Battle of Leipzig.

[2] Two years later, he was appointed to a position as Court Painter for the Imperial Russian family, with the right to live abroad, a concession obtained by his friend Vasily Zhukovsky, who would later become his son-in-law.

[1] In 1841, he invited his friend Jakob Fürchtegott Dielmann to oversee the Artists' Colony and spent his time moving between Russia, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

In the early 1860s, he was forced to give up painting due to failing eyesight, rheumatism and unspecified "nervous complaints", probably brought about by the successive deaths of several friends and family members; including his wife, daughter Elisabeth and youngest son, Christoph.