Dietrich Wilhelm Lindau was a German genre and landscape painter and draftsman.

He first studied at the Dresden Art Academy with Ferdinand Hartmann and was supported by him.

In 1821 he went to Rome on a Saxon scholarship with other German painters (including Carl Götzloff , Carl Georg Schumacher and Anton Josef Dräger ), where he died at the age of 63. He was a co-founder of the Ponte Molle Society in Rome, the forerunner of the German Art Association of 1845. He never returned to his homeland, although he had been offered a teaching position at the Dresden Academy.