Painting bought from Texas thrift store turns out to be Keith Bankston original

July 22 (UPI) -- A Texas man said a painting he bought for $125 at a thrift store is being donated to a museum after it was found to be a work by famed Georgia artist Keith Bankston.

William Pugh, an assistant professor of practice for the University Texas at San Antonio Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, said the painting caught his eye during a recent trip to a thrift store.

Pugh said he suspected the $125 painting, which depicts the biblical Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden, might be an original, so he did some research to find out more about the piece and its artist.

The painting turned out to be Eve in the Rose Garden, a 1982 work by Georgia artist Keith Bankston, who died at the age of only 34 in 1992.

Pugh decided to donate the painting to the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, Ga., after learning the facility had several of Bankston's other works on display.

The museum has not yet determined the painting's value.

"Even if it's worth substantially more, I've always had the inclination that I wanted to donate it," Pugh said in a UTSA news release. "The Tubman Museum in Macon is the perfect place for it."

He said the painting deserves to be seen by the public.

"Hanging in an office or a bedroom in my house probably wouldn't be the best place for it," he said.