Johann Friedrich Helmsdorf was a German landscape painter and etcher.
Helmsdorf received his first art lessons from Johann Adam Breysig at the provincial art school founded in his home town in 1793. In 1809 he married and settled in Strasbourg. He spent several years among the German Romans in Italy. He lived in Rome from the end of December 1816 to March 1820, where he became friends with Karl Philipp Fohr and Augustin Siegert.

Together with the former, he executed paintings of views of Rome and its surroundings on behalf of Caroline von Humboldt, and with the latter he undertook a journey to Sicily. In April 1819, he took part in the exhibition of German artists at the Palazzo Caffarelli, which was also visited by Franz I of Austria. He returned to Strasbourg in 1820. On January 22, 1825, he became a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. Helmsdorf's activities can also be traced in Karlsruhe and Mannheim. In 1831 he was appointed court painter to Baden.

Helmsdorf's landscape paintings show motifs from the Black Forest, the Vosges mountains, the Campagna Romana and Rome. His Roman paintings, such as View of Rome from S. Onofrio (View of Rome from the Tasso Oak), which he drew from nature in Rome in 1818/1819 and completed in oil on canvas in Strasbourg in 1824, were particularly acclaimed. In this painting, the Tasso oak shields a group of friends and thus refers to its integrative function for the German artists in Rome.