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.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN