What is it?
A wax head of King George III, a reproduction taken from an original mould kept in Madame Tussauds’ archive.
What’s its story?
Madame Tussaud, born Marie Grosholtz in Straßburg in 1761, learned her trade with the German wax sculptor Philippe Curtius who had several successful wax figure cabinets in Paris in the 1770s.
By 1803 Mme Tussaud had achieved great success after moving her work to London where she added figures of British royalty to her collection. We know that she made a waxwork of George III ‘from life’ to celebrate the King’s Golden Jubilee of 1810.
The wax cast you can see at Kew Palace was produced in 1996-7 from an original mould kept at Madame Tussauds’. It has been painted using contemporary portraits of the king.
