Washington Post, Oct 20, 1938

Sam Noisette, Federal Doorman,
Opens One-Man Art Show

With "Wash Day in Dixie" as the featured picture, the fifth annual one-man art show by William Samuel Noisette — colored messenger who tends the door leading to the office of J. Edgar Hoover — opened Tuesday at the Phyllis Wheatley Y.W.C.A.

"That picture really has something," Sam admitted as he showed visitors about. "It ought to have though. I kept thinking about it for years before I painted it. It's from things I remember about North Carolina, my home."

Sam, who has been painting since 1910, is completely self taught — but has no trouble selling his wares.

"Indeed, I do sell them," he declared. "More than 100 of my pictures have been sold to FBI officials. They started buying after I painted the portrait of Mr. Hoover's dog. That was a good picture. Mr. Hoover'll be down here to the exhibit before its over. He always comes. I sell outside the FBI, too. Courtney Riley Cooper has one of my pictures."

The Hoover dog is the only portrait Sam ever did. He's a landscape artist. "Mostly an autumn landscape artist, I guess you might say. I like to paint autumn scenes best," he said.

In almost every one of Sam's landscapes small figures of people can be found. Sam thinks they add interest to the landscapes. "See that old couple there in the snow scene?" he asked. "They're all bent over and almost slipping down on the slick ground. That helps the picture."

The Rocky Mountain pictures and the seascapes in the exhibit are what Sam calls "conversation paintings." "I haven't been to those places," he explained. "I painted them from conversations I have heard about them."

Every spare minute Sam has, he said, he spends painting or sketching. His pictures reveal a keen enjoyment of color and a masterful way of using it freely without blatancy.

"I key it down," Sam said. 'And I don't work on one picture too long a time. I always have two going at once. One is to rest me from the other."

Noisette seems to have continued his career as Hoover's "doorman" in a way, as his position at the FBI was to greet visitors before they entered Hoover's office.

http://books.google.com/books?id=-dYDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=samuel...

Thank you, Googlebooks, for making knowledge ever more accessible.

And thank you, Dave, for bringing us this amazingly nuanced and vibrant past.

I wonder how common it was to have an art opening at the Y!? After everything you hear about J. Edgar Hoover, this seems sort of surreal. But that just should teach me -- as it always does on Shorpy -- not to accept the conventional wisdom about historical figures. Everyone has more than one side.

Sam Noisette had quite a career. In his obituary he was called J. Edgar Hoover's "right-hand man." After having progressed from doorman to "personal messenger" and receptionist for Hoover, Sam was made a Special Agent in 1957. When Hoover died in 1972, his will specified "equal distribution of all wearing apparel" between his chauffeur and Sam. So you're looking at the man who inherited half of J. Edgar Hoover's closet. Although he wouldn't have had much time to enjoy it -- Sam died later that year, on his 72nd birthday.

The Washington Post covered his art shows not just for years but for decades.

According to the Washington Afro-American, J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson attended the opening, and later sent flowers.