Arabian oryx towards Saudi Arabia, and by 1914, only a few survived outside that country. A few were reported in Jordan into the 1930s, but by the mid-1930s, the only remaining populations were in the Nafud Desert in northwestern Saudi Arabia and the Rub' al Khali in the south. In the 1930s, Arabian princes and oil company clerks started hunting Arabian oryx with automobiles and rifles. Hunts grew in size, and some were reported to employ as many as 300 vehicles. By the middle of the 20th century, the northern population was effectively extinct. The last Arabian oryx in the wild prior
Christ in the Desert Christ's temptation had attracted Kramskoi already in the early 1860s. In that period he made the first sketch of the composition. The first version of "Christ in the Desert" is dated to 1867, but turned out to be unsuccessful. Kramskoi realized that the choice of vertical format was inappropriate. He opted for the horizontal format and introduced the pallid rocky desert in the background. Kramskoi described the early history of the painting in his letters to writer Vsevolod Garshin. "Christ in the Desert" is one of Kramskoi's Jesus-themed paintings, the other being "Rejoice, King of the Jews" and "Herodias". Kramskoy