Peterssen continued to paint portraits of famous Norwegians, among them authors Alexander Kielland (1887) (whose cousin Magda he married in 1888), Arne Garborg (1894) and Henrik Ibsen (1895), whom he had painted as early as 1875. He also made a portrait of the well-known composer Edvard Grieg in 1893. Peterssen made a success at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 with "Salmon Fishermen at Nesøya", a painting combining the evocative and the naturalistic painting style. This was followed by landscape paintings and motifs of salmon fishermen at Jæren in the southern part of Norway where Peterssen stayed in the summertime in the small village of Sele.