Marie Tussaud

Anna Maria "Marie" Tussaud (French pronunciation: [maʁi tyso]; née Grosholtz; 1 December 1761 – 16 April 1850), commonly known as Madame Tussaud, was a French artist known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussauds, the wax museum she founded in London.

Marie Tussaud was born on 1 December 1761 in Strasbourg, France. Her father, Joseph Grosholtz, was killed in the Seven Years' War just two months before Marie was born. When she was six years old, her mother, Anne-Marie Walder, took her to Bern, Switzerland. There the family moved into the home of local doctor Philippe Curtius (1741–1794), for whom Anne-Marie acted as housekeeper.

Curtius, whom Marie would call her uncle, was skilled in wax modeling. He initially used this talent to illustrate anatomy, but he later used it for portraits. He moved to Paris in 1765 to establish a Cabinet de Portraits En Cire (Wax portraiture firm). In that year, he made a waxwork of Louis XV's last mistress, Madame du Barry, a casting that is the oldest waxwork currently on display. A year later, Tussaud and her mother joined Curtius in Paris. The first exhibition of Curtius' waxworks was shown in 1770 and attracted a large crowd. In 1776, the exhibition was moved to the Palais Royal and, in 1782, Curtius opened a second exhibit, the Caverne des Grands Voleurs (Cavern of the Grand Thieves), a precursor to Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, on Boulevard du Temple.

Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling. She showed talent for the technique and began working for him as an artist. In 1777, she created her first wax figure, that of Voltaire. From 1780 until the Revolution in 1789, Tussaud created many of her most famous portraits of celebrities such as those of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire. During this period her memoirs claim she became employed to teach votive making to Élisabeth, the sister of Louis XVI. In her memoirs, she admitted to be privy to private conversations between the princess and her brother and members of his court. She also claimed that members of the royal family were so pleased with her work that she was invited to live at Versailles for nine years, although no contemporary evidence exists to confirm her accounts.

On 12 July 1789, wax heads of Jacques Necker and the duc d'Orléans made by Curtius were carried in a protest march two days before the attack on the Bastille.

Tussaud was perceived as a royal sympathiser; in the Reign of Terror she was arrested, along with Joséphine de Beauharnais, and her head was shaved in preparation for her execution by guillotine. She said she was released thanks to Collot d'Herbois' support for Curtius and his household. Tussaud said she then was employed to make death masks and whole body casts of the revolution's famous victims, including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Princesse de Lamballe, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre.

When Curtius died in 1794, he left his collection of wax works to Tussaud. In 1795, she married François Tussaud, a civil engineer. The couple had three children: a daughter who died after birth and two sons, Joseph and François.

In 1802, after the Treaty of Amiens, Tussaud went to London with her son Joseph, then four years old, to present her collection of portraits. She had accepted an invitation from Paul Philidor, a magic lantern and phantasmagoria pioneer, to exhibit her work alongside his show at the Lyceum Theatre. She did not fare particularly well financially, and left for Edinburgh in 1803.