It’s advent season, you might have lit the first candle this Sunday, and that’s good, we’re going to be talking wax with a celebrity you’ve all heard of. Miss Tussaud. Well, it’s not her real name, like many stars, it’s a stage name. Her real name is Marie Grossholtz, and she is… Alsatian!
She was born on December 1, 1761, so exactly 260 years ago! His soldier father died just before his birth, his mother Anne Marie Walder had to leave the family home to become a housekeeper in Bern with Doctor Philippe Curtius, physicist, doctor and also wax sculptor, a technique he mainly used to illustrate the ‘anatomy.
He later embarked on portraits. The doctor was called to Paris to wax the portrait of Madame du Barry, Louis XV’s mistress. Philippe Curtius teaches Marie the art of wax modeling, he makes her work for him. She shows a certain talent. Her first realization is the face of François Marie Arouet (known as Voltaire), in 1777. She also produced that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in 1778 and at the same time the portrait of Benjamin Franklin. There are exhibitions, it is success, then comes the Revolution, she flees the capital and gets married to an engineer, François Tussaud. Marie is invited to London by the salon magician Paul Philidor, initiator of traveling phantasmagoria shows, she will therefore show her creations, later helped by her two sons.
In 1835, Marie Tussaud, then 74 years old and tired of her itinerant life, the little family toured all the British Isles, they set up their first permanent exhibition in a rented room in Baker Street, yes yes, that street. , named Baker Street Bazaar, wax museum which will become Madame Tussauds. She died in 1850 at the age of 88, but the fame did not stop, there are currently 24 Tussaud museums around the world. Hats off to Marie Grossholtz, born in Strasbourg, now world famous, born 260 years ago.