Marie Tussaud
French artist (1761–1850)
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.
Biography
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.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q219572. The first chronological checks are 1761, 1850, 1741 and 1794.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marie Tussaud” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.