(1761–1850). Having learned the craft of wax modeling as a child, French-born Marie Tussaud found a demand for her skills during the Reign of Terror (1793–94) that followed the French Revolution. Imprisoned for her loyalty to the French monarchy, Tussaud was later put to work creating wax death masks from the severed heads of the revolution’s victims (see French Revolution). In 1835 she founded Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London. The museum consists of life-size wax models of famous people in history. Notorious criminals and relics of famous crimes are exhibited in the museum’s “Chamber of Horrors,” named by a contributor to the British magazine Punch in 1845. Some of Marie Tussaud’s original wax models preserved in her museum include Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Horatio Nelson, and Sir Walter Scott.
Marie Grosholtz was born on Dec. 1, 1761, in Strasbourg, France. Her early years were spent in Bern, Switzerland, and then in Paris, where she learned the art of wax modeling from her uncle, Philippe Curtius. From 1780 to 1789 Marie served as art tutor for King Louis XVI’s sister, Madame Élisabeth, at the Palace of Versailles. At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Marie was imprisoned as a Royalist—a citizen loyal to King Louis XVI (see French Revolution). During the Reign of Terror she was released from prison and given the gruesome responsibility of making wax death masks from heads severed by the guillotine. Two of the heads were those of King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette.
Following her uncle’s death in 1794, Marie inherited his two wax museums in Paris. In 1795 she married François Tussaud, an engineer from Mâcon, France. The couple had two sons, but the marriage eventually failed. In 1802 Marie moved with her two sons to England, and she spent the next 33 years touring the British Isles to exhibit her wax models. By 1835 she had established a permanent home for her wax museum on Baker Street in London, where she worked until 1842. She died on April 16, 1850, in London. In 1884 the museum was moved to its current location on Marylebone Road in London.