At some time in the eighties or nineties of the last century the Rev. William Done Bushell, a mathematics master at Harrow School, bought a portrait painting at an auction sale at a house in Harrow. It does not seem to have had any pedigree but bore the inscription “Robt. Recorde M.D. 1556”. It was thus presumed to depict the Tudor physician and mathematician Robert Recorde (1510?–1558) who wrote some of the earliest books in English on mathematics and was the first to use the symbol “=” for equality. No other portrait was (or is) known.