DEATH OF MADAME MARIE TUSSAUD
Marie Tussaud was born on 1st December 1761 in Strasbourg, France.
In 1794, Marie married Frances Tussaud.
Marie showed talent for the technique of wax sculpting from an early age, and began working as an artist.
In 1777, she created her first wax figure – of Voltaire.
From 1780 until the Revolution in 1789, Tussaud created many of her most famous portraits of celebrities.
She found herself serving as an art tutor to King Louis XVI’s sister Elisabeth, at the Palace of Versailles.
Here, Marie mingled with high society and created wax models of some of the most influential figures of the time.
In her memoirs, she admitted to being privy to private conversations between the princess and her brother King Louis XVI, 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 a period of nine years.
Being close to the Royal family, Marie was perceived as a royal sympathiser, and in the Reign of Terror she was arrested.
Marie was imprisoned with her mother in the notorious Laforce Prison, Paris.
Her head was shaved in preparation for her exEcution by guillotine, but she was subsequently released.
On her release she was forced to prove her allegiance to the Revolution by making death masks of exEcuted nobles – and her former employers Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
She also made the death masks of the Princess de Lamballe and Robespierre.
These figures became her “Chamber of Horrors”, a collection that would later feature prominently in her exhibitions.
Tussauds most famous work, was undoubtedly the death mask of Marie Antoinette.
Madam Tussaud had known Marie Antoinette from when she had created models of the royal family.
In her 1838 biography, Tussaud told the tale of how she came to make Marie Antoinette’s death mask.
Tussaud had watched the former Queen’s procession to the scaffold, although she fainted before the exEcution.
However, later, she was forced to take her bag of sculpting tools to the Madeleine Cemetery, where under the watchful eyes of the National Assembly, she made a mask of the dead queen’s face.
Madame Tussaud kept the masks, and took them with her on her twenty-year-long tour of Britain, where they found their final home.
In 1838, she wrote her memoirs.
In 1842, she made a self-portrait which is now on display at the entrance of her museum.
Some of the sculptures done by Tussaud herself, still exist.
Marie Tussaud died in her sleep in London, on 16th April 1850 at the age of 88.
There is a memorial tablet to Madame Marie Tussaud on the right side of the nave of St Mary’s Catholic Church, Cadogan Street, London.
One of the greatest waxworks in Madame Tussauds is of Tussaud herself.
A very small old woman, with a large nose and chin, dressed in suitably chilling Victorian clothing.
She stands guard over the rest of the wax figures.
