Helen Gardner had knowledge of art history.
Helen Gardner (art historian) . Her Art Through the Ages remains a standard text for American art history classes . After an interval as a teacher , she returned to the same university to study art history , and received a master 's degree in 1918 . From the frustration of not being able to find a comprehensive textbook that had a broad enough coverage in art history , she resolved the problem by writing such book herself , which resulted in a popular art history textbook used for decades , Art Through the Ages .