Marie Grosholtz (1761-1850) was born in Strasbourg. When she was 6, her widowed mother took Marie to Bern Switzerland. There the family moved into the home of physician Dr Philippe Curtius (1741–1794), for whom mum acted as housekeeper. When he moved to France in 1766, he took mum and Marie with him.
Dr Curtius used his skill in wax modelling to illustrate anatomy. The first exhibition of his waxworks was shown in 1770, and drew many people. The exhibition moved to the Palais Royal in 1776 and the doctor became a member of the Academy of St-Luc two years later. And he opened another location on Boulevard du Temple in 1782.
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Voltaire, 1777
Dr Curtius taught young Marie the art of wax modelling and her first wax sculpture was of Voltaire, in 1777. At 17 she became the art tutor to King Louis XVI's sister at the Palace of Versailles.
She moulded King Louis XVI’s head after his execution. When Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday, the National Assembly instructed Marie to make his death mask and to sketch the scene for the painter Jacques-Louis David. After Charlotte Corday’s own execution, Marie took a cast of the dead woman’s face, and later modelled Marie Antoinette’s and Robespierre’s severed heads.
As Marie was in Paris during the Revolution, she knew that a mob stole the wax busts of the Duc d’Orleans and Finance Minister Necker from their exhibition, and paraded them about the streets in a mock funeral. The mob was shot at, marking the first real blood letting of the Revolution in July 1789, and stoked the storming of the Bastille 2 days later.
The Reign of Terror was the period of the French Revolution from Sep 1793-Jul 1794. With civil war spreading from the Vendée and hostile armies surrounding France on all sides, the Revolutionary government decided to intensify terror and to take harsh measures against the suspected enemies of the Revolution (nobles, priests). In Paris a wave of executions followed. In the provinces, surveillance committees instituted local terror campaigns.
Towards the height of the Terror, Marie was arrested and imprisoned for being pro-royalist for three months awaiting execution. So to prove her allegiance to the Revolution, she was forced to make death masks of guillotined nobles, including the King and Queen. And many of the heads she handled had been her Uncle Dr Curtius’ friends. It was a bloody and hideous task :(
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Dr Curtius used his skill in wax modelling to illustrate anatomy. The first exhibition of his waxworks was shown in 1770, and drew many people. The exhibition moved to the Palais Royal in 1776 and the doctor became a member of the Academy of St-Luc two years later. And he opened another location on Boulevard du Temple in 1782.
Dr Curtius taught young Marie the art of wax modelling and her first wax sculpture was of Voltaire, in 1777. At 17 she became the art tutor to King Louis XVI's sister at the Palace of Versailles.
She moulded King Louis XVI’s head after his execution. When Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday, the National Assembly instructed Marie to make his death mask and to sketch the scene for the painter Jacques-Louis David. After Charlotte Corday’s own execution, Marie took a cast of the dead woman’s face, and later modelled Marie Antoinette’s and Robespierre’s severed heads.
As Marie was in Paris during the Revolution, she knew that a mob stole the wax busts of the Duc d’Orleans and Finance Minister Necker from their exhibition, and paraded them about the streets in a mock funeral. The mob was shot at, marking the first real blood letting of the Revolution in July 1789, and stoked the storming of the Bastille 2 days later.
The Reign of Terror was the period of the French Revolution from Sep 1793-Jul 1794. With civil war spreading from the Vendée and hostile armies surrounding France on all sides, the Revolutionary government decided to intensify terror and to take harsh measures against the suspected enemies of the Revolution (nobles, priests). In Paris a wave of executions followed. In the provinces, surveillance committees instituted local terror campaigns.
Towards the height of the Terror, Marie was arrested and imprisoned for being pro-royalist for three months awaiting execution. So to prove her allegiance to the Revolution, she was forced to make death masks of guillotined nobles, including the King and Queen. And many of the heads she handled had been her Uncle Dr Curtius’ friends. It was a bloody and hideous task :(
Other famous people Marie modelled included Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin and Sir Walter Scott. In fact during her career, Marie met, and often modelled from life, the most famous personages in history then, her personal contemporaries.
Guillotined heads of Marie’s friends in Madelaine Cemetery, Paris.
Copied from Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat, Robespierre etc
Marie Grosholtz inherited the doctor's vast collection of wax models following his death in 1794, but now she was on her own. Hoping to strengthen her position, she married the engineer Francois Tussaud in 1795. The Tussauds had two sons, Joseph and François, but the marriage failed and Marie never saw him again after 1802. As France had become fixated on Napoleon, Marie left Paris, taking the boys and her waxworks across the Channel.
Copied from Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat, Robespierre etc
Marie Grosholtz inherited the doctor's vast collection of wax models following his death in 1794, but now she was on her own. Hoping to strengthen her position, she married the engineer Francois Tussaud in 1795. The Tussauds had two sons, Joseph and François, but the marriage failed and Marie never saw him again after 1802. As France had become fixated on Napoleon, Marie left Paris, taking the boys and her waxworks across the Channel.
Marie couldn’t speak English, but they couldn’t return to France during the Napoleonic Wars. So they continued to travel across Great Britain and Ireland for years, exhibiting her collection. They finally settled in London, in Baker St and Portman Square, and accepted an invitation from Paul Philidor, a magic lantern pioneer, to exhibit at London’s Lyceum Theatre. Alas Philidor took half her profits.
It was in Baker St that Madame Tussaud opened a museum in 1836. One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors, an exhibition that included victims of the French Revolution and newly created figures of murderers. I am assuming the most notorious characters were segregated in the Chamber of Horrors to protect children. Yet I liked the reviewer who saw the Horrors as a child: “Guy Fawkes crouching by a barrel of gunpowder had terrified me, as had a peculiarly pockmarked waxwork of Hans Christian Andersen. The Chamber of Horrors was certainly upsetting, but not as much as the tableau of the Battle of Trafalgar. This had noise and lights and you felt you were standing on the gun deck of HMS Victory. There, breathing his last, was the bloody, pale body of Lord Horatio Nelson.
The gallery originally contained c400 different figures, but fire damage in 1925, and German bombs in 1941, rendered most of the early models defunct. The casts themselves have survived, allowing the historical waxworks to be remade, and these can be seen in the museum's history exhibit. The oldest figure on display is that of Madame du Barry, the 1765 work of Dr Curtius. Other early faces included Robespierre and George III.
Madame Tussaud related her own role in history to fascinated audiences: she had lived at Versailles, been art tutor to Louis XVI’s sister and cast the king from life. Later, during the Revolution, been ordered by the National Convention to duplicate his severed head. There was the king’s blood in her lap. Listen, she said, I am history!
It was in Baker St that Madame Tussaud opened a museum in 1836. One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors, an exhibition that included victims of the French Revolution and newly created figures of murderers. I am assuming the most notorious characters were segregated in the Chamber of Horrors to protect children. Yet I liked the reviewer who saw the Horrors as a child: “Guy Fawkes crouching by a barrel of gunpowder had terrified me, as had a peculiarly pockmarked waxwork of Hans Christian Andersen. The Chamber of Horrors was certainly upsetting, but not as much as the tableau of the Battle of Trafalgar. This had noise and lights and you felt you were standing on the gun deck of HMS Victory. There, breathing his last, was the bloody, pale body of Lord Horatio Nelson.
The gallery originally contained c400 different figures, but fire damage in 1925, and German bombs in 1941, rendered most of the early models defunct. The casts themselves have survived, allowing the historical waxworks to be remade, and these can be seen in the museum's history exhibit. The oldest figure on display is that of Madame du Barry, the 1765 work of Dr Curtius. Other early faces included Robespierre and George III.
Madame Tussaud related her own role in history to fascinated audiences: she had lived at Versailles, been art tutor to Louis XVI’s sister and cast the king from life. Later, during the Revolution, been ordered by the National Convention to duplicate his severed head. There was the king’s blood in her lap. Listen, she said, I am history!
[But note that some disagree. “At its heart, Tussauds isn’t about history: it’s a museum of the human body. It’s not about what these people achieved, but what they looked like”.]
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Madame Tussaud, self portrait
As she suffered from more severe asthma, Madame Tussaud re-found her Catholic faith. Her sons were at her Baker St home when she died in 1850 aged 89. Her life had been both an astounding survivor’s tale and historian’s dream. She was buried in the Catholic chapel in Fulham Road, with many French exiles before her.
By 1883, the restricted space and rising cost of the Baker St site prompted her grandson Joseph Randall to commission the building at its current Marylebone Rd location. The new exhibition galleries were successfully opened in July 1884. However Randall had bought out his cousin Louisa's half share in the business in 1881, and with the extra building costs, the business struggled. A limited company was formed in 1888 to attract fresh capital, but was dissolved after family disagreements. So Tussaud's was sold to a group in Feb 1889, led by Edwin Josiah Poyser.
The first overseas branch of Madame Tussauds was opened in Amsterdam in 1970.the
As she suffered from more severe asthma, Madame Tussaud re-found her Catholic faith. Her sons were at her Baker St home when she died in 1850 aged 89. Her life had been both an astounding survivor’s tale and historian’s dream. She was buried in the Catholic chapel in Fulham Road, with many French exiles before her.
By 1883, the restricted space and rising cost of the Baker St site prompted her grandson Joseph Randall to commission the building at its current Marylebone Rd location. The new exhibition galleries were successfully opened in July 1884. However Randall had bought out his cousin Louisa's half share in the business in 1881, and with the extra building costs, the business struggled. A limited company was formed in 1888 to attract fresh capital, but was dissolved after family disagreements. So Tussaud's was sold to a group in Feb 1889, led by Edwin Josiah Poyser.
The first overseas branch of Madame Tussauds was opened in Amsterdam in 1970.the