Education
From 1851 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
From 1851 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
He also designed the Stork Fountain on Amagertorv in Copenhagen
In the 1860s and 1870s he painted romantic landscape paintings under influence of Vilhelm Kyhn. In the 1880s Petersen painted a number of figure paintings of street life in Copenhagen under influence of French Realism. His most famous paintings are Emigrants on Larsens Plads (1890) and A Return, the America Liner at Larsens Plads (1894).
The sculptor Vilhelm Bissen moulded the birds and the fountain was inaugurated in 1904.