From the beginning, González worked in a free and flexible manner and did not stick rigidly to any particular techniques, giving him space to express his lively and restless personality.

As a master, he used to tell his students that to be a good painter, “first you must learn to observe and get excited about the colours and forms of nature, regardless of whether the picture and its details are accurate reflection of reality or not.” Juan Francisco González,[2][3] son of José González and Mercedes Escobar, grew up in Recoleta, a neighborhood of Santiago that runs along the side of Cerro Blanco hill, where his family ran a business importing goods from Ecuador.

His visits to Spain, Italy, England, France and Germany instilled in him a much more modern style of art than the traditional techniques he had learned in Chile.

His skillful execution and sensitivity to atmosphere placed him alongside the community of young artists who revolutionized visual arts in 19th century Paris.

Isabel Cruz González called him “the first modern Chilean painter” and said that “he left a mark like none other of his contemporaries, capturing on canvas the essence of Chilean popular life.” Throughout his career, until the day he died, he aimed for the maximum effect on the canvas, minimising and simplifying the themes, a characteristic that can be observed from his early landscapes to the still lifes he produced at the end of his life.