The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has paid $1.25 million for a still life painting that for years covered a hole in the wall in an Indiana home, its value unknown to the owner and its existence unknown to art experts.

The painting, ''Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth'' by the 19th-century American painter Martin Johnson Heade, was sold by a man in his 30's who works at a tool-and-die company. He started to realize the value of the work in January when he played Masterpiece, a board game about art that includes an image of a similar Heade.

Intrigued, he turned to the Internet, found that Kennedy Galleries in Manhattan handled Heade's work and sent an E-mail asking if his painting might be by that artist. He then sent digital images of it to Kennedy, which had the painting authenticated and made the match with the Houston museum.

''This is an important rediscovery, and the painting is a magnificent example of Heade's work at its best,'' said Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., author of the 1975 catalogue raisonne of Heade's works. For the newly updated edition Mr. Stebbins, the American paintings curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, quickly added the Houston Heade.