The painting, now in the collection of the Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery.
It is possibly the painting listed in an auction catalogue of Ralph Allen’s estate in 1769.
Surprisingly little is known of the life of John Padmore, whose major achievements in engineering occurred in the 1730's.
Padmore was consulted regarding the stability of St Nicholas' Church Bristol by the Churchwardens and the removal of the medieval gateway in 1730 and referred to as the ingenious Mr Padmore - it took until 1760 to move forward with this project
He was involved in the design and construction of Ralph Allen's Combe Down tramway, built c.1729-30 for transporting stone from the newly-opened Combe Down quarries to Dolemead Wharf, on the river Avon at Bath.
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In 1735 the Great Crane of Bristol was erected on the quayside of the new Mud Dock, and in the 1742 edition of his Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, Daniel Defoe refers to this crane as being 'the workmanship of the late ingenious Mr Padmore'.
According to Halfpenny, the Great Crane was erected at the Gibb of Bristol in 1735. It is marked on John Rocque’s A Plan of the City of Bristol of 1742, and in a vignette on his 1745 map of the city. The same illustration appears in Barrett's The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol of 1789, but the clearest representation is that by William Halfpenny, made in 1747, and in the possession of Bristol City Museum
It is possible that Padmore had died a little earlier, in about 1740, for a minute of the Committee of the Society of Merchant Venturers for the 18th of October of that year notes that Mrs Padmore attended and offered to sell a crane 'which is already made'.
Unfortunately the engravings within have been folded and the automatic scanning process does not recognise this and so they are very much compromised. Volume 2 -
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.532665645x&seq=6
Amore useful online version of Volume 1 is available at
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https://eprints.oxfordarchaeology.com/765/13/7_CODOM01_Chapter05.pdf
