What connects a deadly machine used during the French Revolution with a museum full of celebrities taking selfies? The answer is one extraordinary woman:…
Long before visitors queued to pose beside wax celebrities, the name Madame Tussaud was connected with severed heads, revolutionary violence and an extraordinary talent for turning history into entertainment. How did a young French wax artist become the founder of a global attraction?
Marie Grosholtz was born in Strasbourg in 1761. She learnt to sculpt under Philippe Curtius, a physician and skilled modeller whose lifelike wax figures fascinated the public. By 1777, Marie had produced a portrait of the philosopher Voltaire. The official history of Madame Tussauds also places her at the royal court in Versailles, where she taught art to a member of King Louis XVI’s family.
Her life took a dramatic turn with the French Revolution of 1789. The struggle against the monarchy developed into a period of extraordinary fear and bloodshed. The guillotine became its most recognisable instrument of execution, claiming victims including Louis XVI in January 1793 and Marie Antoinette that October.
According to Marie’s later account, she was arrested and imprisoned during the Revolution. She claimed that she narrowly avoided execution and was required to create death masks of people who had been guillotined. Such masks were made by taking an impression of the deceased person’s face, helping artists produce a convincing likeness. The idea of an artist working so close to the aftermath of executions is chilling. However, historians point out that Marie’s memoirs contain questionable details, so her most dramatic claims should not be treated as unquestionable fact.
In 1794, Marie inherited Curtius’s wax collection. She married François Tussaud the following year, but building her future would require a bold decision. In 1802, she took her exhibition to Britain and spent more than three decades touring towns and cities. She arranged displays, promoted performances and worked hard to attract paying audiences. Eventually, in 1835, she established a permanent home for her collection at London’s Baker Street Bazaar.
Visitors were attracted not only by royal portraits but also by wax representations of notorious criminals and victims of the Revolution. In 1846, Punch magazine gave a memorable name to the exhibition’s disturbing section: the ‘Chamber of Horrors’.
Marie died in 1850, aged 88. In 1884, her descendants moved the attraction to Marylebone Road, where the London museum remains today. Her legacy has since reached cities around the world. Modern visitors can meet wax versions of actors, musicians, politicians and sporting stars, often taking photographs beside them. The subject matter may have changed, but the business still depends on Marie’s original insight: people are fascinated by the chance to get close to figures they usually know only from a distance.
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