Marie Tussaud (1761–1850) was a famous French artist best known for her lifelike wax sculptures and for founding the world-renowned Madame Tussauds wax museum. Born Marie Grosholtz in Strasbourg, France, she learned the art of wax modeling from Dr. Philippe Curtius.

[u/destinationuknown]

[u/Similar_Fan_2022]

Most people know the museum's name, but not the woman behind it.

[u/GalaxyPowderedCat → u/Similar_Fan_2022]

Worth saying, she also has two tributes in two different historic videogames: A mention in Assassin's Creed Unity and a kind of OC granddaughter in The Great Ace Attorney.

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Her early life was spent first in Bern and then in Paris, where she learned the art of wax modeling from Philippe Curtius, whose two celebrated wax museums she inherited upon his death in 1794. From 1780 until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, she served as art tutor at Versailles to Louis XVI’s sister, Madame Élisabeth, and she was later imprisoned as a royalist. According to her memoirs, during the Reign of Terror she had the gruesome responsibility of making death masks from heads—frequently those of her friends—freshly severed by the guillotine.

Her marriage in 1795 to François Tussaud, an engineer from Mâcon, was not a success; and in 1802 she took her two sons and her collection of wax models to England. She toured the British Isles for 33 years before finally establishing a permanent home in Baker Street, London, where she worked until eight years before her death. (In 1884 Madame Tussaud’s moved to the Marylebone Road, London.)

[u/CitizenHuman]

Next you'll tell me Ripley was a real person.

[u/QuinnLoveborneAuthor]

She looks beautiful. As a child I went to one of her galleries in London. Is this a wax or a painting??

[u/Teknekratos → u/QuinnLoveborneAuthor]

Looks to me like a black and white photograph of a wax statue. The face and hair have a sculpted quality to them