Letter: More pictures

Tim Hilton's comments on the Raeburn exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh are misleading ("Edinburgh Festival", Real Life, 3 August). Although the exhibition contains 11 works from the National Gallery of Scotland, it is far more than "augmented by a dozen portraits still in private hands". The truth is that there are more than 50 additional paintings drawn from both public and private collections worldwide: Australia, the United States, France - and England!

As for including major paintings that happen to belong to the National Gallery of Scotland, what is wrong with that? Could your critic imagine, say, a serious Turner exhibition at the Tate that didn't include major pictures from the Tate's Clore building? It wouldn't make sense. Why should we treat a major Scottish painter differently?

Duncan Thomson

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh