Life-size figures--Museum at the Palais Royal--Exhibition on
the Boulevard du Temple--Benjamin Franklin--Voltaire.
A good deal of hearsay and some incontestable evidence helps to fill the
hiatus between the time Curtius came to Paris and the outbreak of the
Revolution.
Although the many years spent by Curtius in the production of miniatures
in coloured wax do not appear to have brought him a very great or a very
wide reputation, yet they were the means of leading him to the modelling
of life-size portraits in this same material, with the express intention
of forming them into a collection solely for the object of exhibiting
them to the public.
Now it is to this important departure in the treatment of his works that
we owe the present Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition, an establishment with
which his name must be for ever associated.
He seems to have set his mind upon this venture round about the year
1776, and some years later to have opened a Museum of life-size portrait
models at the Palais Royal, an enterprise that was soon to be followed
by the opening of a second Exhibition of a far more renowned and
interesting character on the Boulevard du Temple, to which we shall have
occasion to refer more than once.
The Museum at the Palais Royal seems to have proved a lucrative concern,
and to have been devoted to the portraits of men and women of position,
holding for the time being a prominent place in the public eye. Little is
known concerning it, except for a few meagre and commonplace references
in the literature of the period, and it may, to all intents and purposes,
be considered as relegated to the domain of the forgotten past.
We shall not, however, find ourselves able to dispose of the Exhibition
on the Boulevard du Temple without rendering an account of it, for in the
course of a few years it figured very largely in the Revolution, and had
associated with it several incidents of an important and far-reaching
character.
There is the record about this time of an acquaintance between the
sculptor and Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and philosopher.
Franklin had come to Paris in December, 1776, “to transact the business
of his country at the Court of France,” his chief purpose being to obtain
political and financial assistance in consolidating the newly formed
United States of America.
Curtius and his niece--now a young woman of sixteen years--had the
pleasure of entertaining the Doctor, who took considerable interest in
their work. Not only did he commission them to execute several distinct
portraits of himself, but he also ordered models of many other notable
characters of the day. One of his own portraits is the identical figure
which has been shown at Madame Tussaud’s ever since.
[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Modeled from life, in Paris, by Christopher Curtius for his Exhibition.]
This model was executed in 1783, in which year Franklin assumed great
prominence as one of the signatories to the Treaty of Peace between the
Mother Country and the United States, which recognised the latter as
an independent nation. The figure in question is a life-size one; but,
in addition to this, Curtius, aided by his capable niece, who was now
earnestly supporting her uncle in his work, produced several miniature
portraits of the statesman which went directly into his possession.
Indeed, it is well known that Franklin had in his rooms in Paris many
works that had emanated from Curtius’s studio.
In Franklin’s _Autobiography_ there is an account of his home in Market
Street, Philadelphia, in which he finally settled, and the following
extract under the date 13th July, 1787, from a journal kept by an old
friend of his, the Reverend Dr. Manasseh Cutler, a distinguished scholar
and botanist, of Hamilton, Massachusetts, who had recently paid him a
visit, shows that he took with him from Paris a number of miniatures,
many of which he had obtained from Curtius:
Over his mantel he has a prodigious number of medals, busts and
casts in wax or plaster of paris, which are the effigies of the
most noted characters in Europe.
When Franklin returned to America in 1785 there sailed with him, on
board the same ship, Houdon, the eminent French sculptor, who had been in
his early student days a friend and companion of Curtius, who engaged his
services, and to whom he rendered considerable assistance in his work.
Houdon’s skill was highly appreciated by Franklin, and the object of
the journey to America was that the sculptor might execute a statue of
Washington for the State of Virginia, the instructions for the work
coming from both Franklin and Jefferson. The voyage was made in the
_London Packet_, and the date of the embarkation was the 27th of July,
1785.
Perhaps the most famous man of this period was the satirist, philosopher,
and dramatist, Voltaire, who, throughout the whole of his long life, had
championed the cause of the people against arbitrary and despotic power.
[Illustration: THREE VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE’S HEAD
Modeled from life by Christopher Curtius in Paris during the spring of
1778, a few weeks before Voltaire’s death.]
After an absence of twenty-eight years the aged Voltaire left his home on
the shores of Geneva and returned to Paris, arriving there on the 10th
of February, 1778. He was welcomed by an ovation that might well have
befitted the homecoming of a great conqueror.
Curtius’s reputation at that time stood at its highest, and Voltaire
gave him several sittings soon after his arrival. It is owing to this
circumstance that the artist was able to place among the models of
his recently opened Exhibition on the Boulevard du Temple a life-size
standing figure of this popular idol.
It is a matter of exceptional interest that the selfsame figure still
exists, and is shown to-day as one of the most attractive and notable
objects in Madame Tussaud’s, where it has stood for just upon a century
and a half.
Besides producing this figure, Curtius took the opportunity the sittings
afforded him of executing several miniature models, one of them
representing the philosopher during his last moments. To this he gave
the title of “The Dying Socrates.” Several copies of this are known to
exist, and we give an illustration of the one in the Tussaud collection.
These were the last portraits produced of him from life, and they were
completed none too soon.
[Illustration: “THE DYING SOCRATES”
Portrait of Voltaire at the time of his death. Wax miniature modeled by
Christopher Curtius.]
The stirring reception accorded Voltaire on his arrival in Paris, to
which he responded with great energy, coupled with the strenuous effort
and anxiety attending his personal superintendence of his new tragedy,
_Irene_, soon affected his health. The sittings were given during the
months of March and April, and on the following 30th of May his eventful
life terminated at the age of eighty-four.