Champ de Mars, Port Louis, Mauritius

Numa Desjardins was recorded by the London Gazette as an artist from Mauritius exhibiting at the Paris Exhibition in 1867. His view of Saint-Denis in Réunion (1854) is in the Musée Léon Dierx, Réunion. The Champs de Mars in Port Louis was the site of the racecourse on the island, built shortly after the British conquest in 1810, and inaugurated by the Mauritius Turf Club in 1812. It was the first racecourse in the southern hemisphere and the second oldest in the world. The grounds were clearly depicted in one of the plates (Port Louis from the Champ de Mars) in Lieutenant Richard Temple's Eight Views of the Mauritius ... published c.1813.