Dubourcq and his travelling companion, the painter Willem Bodeman, spent the winter in Rome. Dubourcq later wrote to a colleague ‘…for the ordinary traveller Rome is rather somber and sad, but for us it was a favourite place to be.’ The friends headed back north in the spring of 1844, making ‘a study tour’ of their journey. They stayed in Narni, a hilltop village in Umbria, for a few days in June.